Tristan Ulysses Hutgens, born 1994 in Düsseldorf. After he achieved the additional title of a ‘Meisterschüler’ in 2018 in the class of Prof. Didier Vermeiren, he continued his studies parallel at the Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 2020 he graduated from the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Tristan Ulysses Hutgens is currently working on a sculpture in Public-Space project for which he designed a bended sculpture out of steel. Recently, in April 2020 he won the ‘New Talent Award 2020’ of the Neue Galerie in Gladbeck, Germany. Before he had several group- and solo exhibitions e.g. ‘One Sculpture’ in 2019 in Paris, ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ in 2018 at the Folkwang Museum in Essen as well as the exhibition ‘Fachwerk’ in 2018 at the Kunsthaus in Mettmann.
In the beginning I started trying to push ahead the limits of classical sculpture. With my first studies I not only learned through my own work how to deal with the sculptural questions but subsequently I tried to reach a higher level of the genre mentioned. The approach how I start creating a sculpture is different on every occasion: Sometimes it’s a more vague idea of getting to a point. Another time it’s a crazy notion like going to a quarry to choose a limestone carrying it to the studio and putting salt acid on top of it. However, in every case the question is how each of those actions affects the others. At that specific point it might be something worth to be ‘carved’ out and will transform itself that leads to a new consciousness of seeing. The main point in my work is to keep the essence of things: If the material that surrounds you never dies and stays what it has always been and always will be...
At the beginning there is perpetually a high intend of an analytical and causal accomplishment of the process. It is the being within itself and the relation to the room that makes my sculptures how they are and how they interfere.
To frame interesting fragments is a very important part of my work. That is why I constantly take photos to comprehend what I am doing and what I did as well as the sculptural aspects of the same in order to make the archaic power possible to experience. The photograph as well as the sculpture can stand for itself. At the same time, they can be reciprocally related to one another. A sculpture in the end can be a part of a photography and a photography within its own qualities, creates its own plastic impact on the space. In that way photo and Sculptural work create a new Juxtaposition.
