Wolfgang Woerner is a German British mixed-media artist.
Wolfgang’s creative practice moves freely between 2 and 3 dimensions, paper and cloth, drawing and stitch, as ideas drift in the making. Touch is an essential aspect in his process of creating works. This physical contact, the handling of stuff, currently embraces discarded things including toys, restaurant napkins and hotel bedsheets both literally and as prompts in recreating and retelling the stories of all they have passed through.
His work responds to the beautiful decay below the polished veneer, subjects in the midst of inner turmoil, altered realities that create places of safety and belonging, and concepts of personal and communal space and their boundaries. And it reacts against the false intellectualising and editing of the past to fit an ideal.
There are three main threads that weave in and out of the work. In a nutshell these are child neglect, the impact of AIDS on the gay community, and distorted concepts of manners and mannerisms.
A reoccurring subject is the multitude of ways in which effects of abandonment and child neglect manifest in historic and contemporary life, how society and governments address or ignore these issues, and deep-rooted implications in relation to Wolfgang’s own gender and queer identities.
Shifting perceptions and social changes over the past few decades regarding the impact of AIDS on the queer community are woven into the work: the twisted flow between pasts and futures.
Manners … we get taught from a young age what is considered good or bad behaviour, referenced predominately to the environment we are raised in, only to discover that often these values do not correspond to reality or experience, leaving us seriously at odds with the world around us.