BURO EMPTY
INVITATION
NEWSPACE
SAMEBUILDING


Tobias und Raphael Danke : Die Drei
Solo Exhibition
January the 14th 2006 - February the 18th 2006
Opening Saturday January the 14th from 4pm - 6pm

Buro Empty
Willemsparkweg 17, 1071 GP Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone : + 31 20 6707147
e-mail : info@buroempty.com
www.buroempty.com

The starting point for much of the work of Tobias and Raphael Danke is a model-like examination
of perceptual processes. In “Die Drei” (The Three) they use reference to their great-grandfather,
evolution researcher August Weismann (1834-1914) to illustrate their own artistic genesis and
sculptural constructions of human evolution.

The three sculptures follow the order of the three phases of evolution (according to de Chardin).
The first sculpture, “Die Prävitale Baustelle” (The Pre-Vital Construction Zone), concentrates
on Cosmogenesis or the primary formation of materiality. Consisting of a pen built out of stone
slabs, this piece symbolically breaks the floor with (naturally) oil-soaked slabs. 
Biogenesis and Anthropogenesis follow in a meandering at first worm-like and increasingly 
anthropomorphic form that grows across a sort of folding scientific bench: “The biology of 
freedom: from organic differentiation to the physical formation of Spirit.”
The third sculpture constitutes a new evolutionary phase in a table-like form made out of light
tubes, an ethereal, digital, embodied spiritual dimension.
Accompanying the three sculptures, three images will be exhibited: “Boden” (floor) is an inkjet
print (2004) of a broken and lifted plate-tectonic model; “Kristalle” (Crystals) is a 2004
photogram, and “Die Drei” (The Three) is a photomontage based on an original photograph of August
Weismann and two assistants. Here Tobias and Raphael Danke are in the rolls of the assistants at
the side of their great-grandfather in 1880, collaged on the cover of the anthroposophic journal
“Die Drei.”

In the 19th century dedicated Darwinian Weismann succeeded in showing that hereditary information
is not as was commonly held circulated in the bloodstream (blood heredity) and therefore were
unrelated to any bodily or phychological changes. The dominant (Lamarkian) scientific view at the
time held that faculties developed in the course of a life time could be hereditarily passed on.
Good smelling beeswax honeycomb rolls supplemented by photographs of nice looking animals and 
people, point the way to Rudolf Steiner who in his “Philosophy of Freedom” enveyed against the
“preformation doctrine.” In addition to the hereditary information of parents there is a factor
that decides the individuality of the person: creative thought!

A kind of disembodiment is detectable in Athroposophism revealing the sublimation necessary for the
observation of linguistic symbolism and world-reception, as well as the activity and aesthetics of
a type-specific art theory.


Special thanks to Adamski Gallery Aachen Germany
www.adamskigallery.com

Gallery hours are :
Wednesday through Saturday
2 pm – 6 pm

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