Thilo Frank, You and I wandering on the snake's tail, 2016. ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst

The inclusive sensory experience

The title of the work is just as strange as the form of the sculpture, You and I wandering on the snake’s tail. It’s impossible to walk on a snake’s tail! And two people at that! But inherent in the cryptic title lies perhaps the most important intention of the work: Thilo Frank invites us to embark on a journey together and points out how our understanding of the world is collectively created. Only after active bodily participation do you understand that Thilo Frank’s installation consists of 45 triangular wooden frames placed around an empty, oval core. The triangles appear in a staggered pattern, which gives the work its rotating, spiral-like form. Over time the visitors and nature itself will slowly form the work; the visitors tread on the grass, and through the course of the day, the sun’s rays hit the wooden slats creating dynamic patterns onthe surrounding grass. With its unsettled formal language, Thilo Frank’s artwork arouses the curiosity of the passer-by and invites exploration. The work challenges our normal understanding and experience of light and space, and through a sensory and bodily approach, we see ourselves, others and the natural surroundings from new perspectives.

Thilo Frank (b. 1978)

Thilo Frank lives and works in Munich and Berlin. He graduated from the Staatliche Akademie der Bildende Künste Stuttgart and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He has participated in two exhibitions at ARKEN, TREFFPUNKT: Berlin, 2012 and Art in Sunlight, 2015. In addition, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions all over the world, many of which have been in Denmark.

Thilo Frank works in the intersection between installation, design and architecture. His artworks place the viewer in situations that create architectural displacements which interrupt our habitual environments. He challenges the motion of the body and gives the initiative to the viewer. When we step into his installations, we reconsider and reconstitute social spaces. Physical phenomena and environments from our everyday life are interrupted in new contexts by emphasizing our perception of light, space and motion in poetic and playful ways.

Thilo Frank, 2020. Photo courtesy: Otto Schindler