THOMAS KILPPER
keynote speaker
Thomas Kilpper was trained as a sculptor, and tends to regard any artistic choice of materials of process is service to a particular artistic concept. For several years he has used woodcut methods to cut large-scale relief-blocks into the floor of historic buildings. The images are cut directly into the floor in response to the history and memory of that particular building. Using a large, heavy roller he fabricated, Kilpper prints the woodblock on modern textiles. The textile sections are then sewn together and the print is then hung on the building exterior, similar to a banner. For one of his projects “Don’t Look Back,” the print was made from a woodblock he carved into a 12 x 20 meter wooden basketball court at Camp King, in the vicinity of Frankfurt/Main, which was used after 1945 by the US secret service for interrogations of significant Nazi officers. For a later project titled “The Ring,” he spent five months cutting into the (tenth) floor of Orbit House, an abandoned office block in Blackfriars (London). The core of the work is four hundred square meter woodcut, cut directly into the mahogany parquet floor of the building. The woodcut has been formed from memories of the varied histories of the site now occupied by Orbit House. He was recently appointed to a printmaking faculty position at the
www.kilpper-projects.de/blog
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