Time Trap | Thomas Lucker 

Thomas Lucker,

Time Trap - Photographic Memories... Written in Stone

The exhibition Time Trap presents new reliefs by Thomas Lucker. The works have memory as their theme. “The fact is, the past remains to a large extent inaccessible to us. What interests me is the plasticity of our memory. We can’t recall what really was, but instead construct memories from bits and pieces. Our brain continuously constructs a closed image of the world in order for us to move confidently within it.”
Thomas Lucker uses limestone, a rock created from marine sediment laid down millions of years ago, as the carrier for his images. This worthy mineral is then photographically exposed for a few seconds in black and white - analogue negatives with motifs from the “memory album”. They are then chiselled into the stone’s surface - and coloured like antique wall paintings with pigments - or in part gilded. Depending on the light incidence, sometimes the motifs appear more as a relief, three-dimensional and dynamic, or flatter like a photograph that has melded into the stone. The viewer sinks into the erstwhile captured moment. The genres are portrait, landscape and documentation. The time machine of art becomes a “Time Trap”. --- “Time Trap” the title of the new exhibition, is a reference to a science fiction comic that Thomas Lucker read in his youth. What is interesting in this new series is that it reflects a concept of a future that has long since become obsolete – nostalgic –timeless– still contemporary?
“Time traps and time warps are sci-fi elements; things that take place during time travel. Science fiction played an important role in my childhood and still fascinates me to this day - a cultural construct, with parallels to sociological systems and religions. The visions and the aesthetic of science fiction from the 1960s and 70s mirror phenomena like the Cold War and the fear of atomic overkill, but also of flower power and the concurrent narrow-mindedness of the time.”
Thomas Lucker was born in Osten an der Oste in 1959. He spent parts of his formative years on his fathers freight ship. After training as a stone sculptor, he studied sculpture at the Hannover School of Art. In1987 he worked on various projects involving public space – in Lower Saxony and Bavaria. Until 1991 Klaus Bahlsen was one of his patrons. In addition to his artistic work Thomas Lucker also works as an art restorer. Thomas Lucker has been living and working in Berlin since 1996. In 1997 he founded the company “Restaurierung am Oberbaum” in Berlin together with two partners. In 2000, he began traveling regularly to the Butana Steppe in Sudan and has contributed to the development of antique structures in the Naga archaeological park. Amongst other projects he developed concepts for the presentation of ancient Egyptian architecture in the Neue Museum and in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The artist is also responsible for the inventory of sculptural art in the Tiergarten under the purview of the State Office of Historical Monuments in Berlin.

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