This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition titled Come On! by Franz Ackermann held at Dirimart Dolapdere on 14 September–15 October 2017. This is a ‘kind of a sketchbook’ of the artist accompanied by an essay by Carmela Thiele and a glossary providing hints towards understanding his oeuvre.
Franz Ackermann generates lively paintings and installations that disclose different aspects of tourism, based on themes like globalisation and urban life, inspired by his backpack travels around the world’s megacities. With his first major series Mental Maps he created watercolour paintings that combine the street maps’ sensitivity to reflect the truth and his own interpretation of the cities he has been to. Franz Ackermann designed large-scale dynamic installations using components, such as paintings, photographs, wall drawings, sculptures, and structures, resembling advertising panels. Although travel and documentation thereof play a central role in the artist’s work, painting remains as the most important medium for him; using murals and installations, he escalates its suggestive power to the absolute limit. How potent his continually expanding cosmos – consisting of action (travel), reflection (internalized theory), and painting – still, after twenty years of work, is manifest in his newest paintings taken into this catalogue.
