Opening Reception: “Sudarium” By Reinhold Engberding

CentralTrak is pleased to present “SUDARIUM” by Reinhold Engberding. A past CentralTrak resident, Engberding's installation is the continuation of a series of image "interviews" with the same title, which he started in 2006. Sudarium is the Latin expression for a special textile relic, one that has been used to wipe sweat, or in an intimate fashion. These 144 drawings are painted with ink on used bed sheets. Each unique ink drawing was sourced from the Internet; including porn websites, news sources with reports about the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as, semi-official U.S. law enforcement websites. The images utilized from these sources are mug shots of men, all viewed with the same question from the sonless Engberding: Is that my son? A project of self-discovery, the artist's feelings transform these static web images into self-portrait transformations as Engberding contemplates the father-son-relationship. As the artist reflects, “bed sheet(s) take (on) tears, sweat and other body fluids and in this respect it’s predestined for this series of portraits." These images float on the walls looking down on the observer. Suddenly the observer becomes the observed. Bio: Reinhold Engberding is a German artist. He studied landscape architecture and fine arts in Kassel, Kiel and The Hague, and has lived and worked in Hamburg since 1982. Awarded multiple national and international grants to fund his practice, he has been working abroad in Thailand, Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands and consistently in the U.S., partially connected with a lectureship. He has had several solo and duo shows and has taken part in group shows in Germany and abroad. Engberding is primarily a sculptor, an object maker, and is concerned with installation works. Although drawing and painting have not been his chosen medium for quite some time now he is concerned with images of young men, whom he questions whether they could possibly be his sons. Is that my son? is the overarching title of all these series so far. His work involves the topics of identity and intimacy, privacy, longing and desire.