Via Lewandowsky

Volker Via Lewandowsky (born 7 March 1963, in Dresden) is a German artist who works with installation, sculpture, object art, photography, performance, painting and drawing.

Starting in 1985, he organised subversive performances together with the avant-garde group Autoperforationsartisten that undermined the Communist art authorities of Eastern Germany (GDR).

He is most familiar for his sculptural-installation works and exhibition scenographies with architectonic influences such as Gehirn und Denken: Kosmos im Kopf [Brain and Thinking: Cosmos in Mind: 2000] displayed at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden.

His preference for tragicomedy, absurdity and paradox as well as the Sisyphean drama of continuous repetition and futility of action link Via Lewandowsky's art with Dadaism, Surrealism and Fluxus.

The ironic breaks with everyday life, the intrusion of the strange into the familiar, often domestic realm take place in his work by using the detritus of the German bourgeoisie: cuckoo clocks, DIY garden sheds, parakeets or bureaucracy.

Cannon were fired at the participants with the fusillades consisting of confetti made from miniature business cards bearing the code names and professions of thousands of the Stasi's domestic spies.

Roter Teppich's overlapping of various layers of comprehension and the conscious aim of misguiding his audience by constructing unclear narrative threads are characteristic qualities of Via Lewandowsky's work.