Description

Katre bases his work on photographs from disused urban-industrial buildings. He usually then overlays these with abstract energy-related elements derived from the formal language of graffiti letters. He varies this theme in different techniques and genres such as mural painting, printmaking, installation and real graffiti interventions in vacant lots and industrial ruins: “I feel good in abandoned factories! They are my studio, my laboratory where I find inspiration, and the center of my work.” On the one hand, his painted or sculptural wedges and arrows suggest energies that transcend visible structures; on the other, they still function as the writer’s stylistic trademark. Everybody’s got their own arrow! In on-site installations such as Industrial Energy in the abandoned administration and bank building in Völklingen's Rathausstrasse, neon tubes dynamically placed in the space assume a suggestive compositional function. Painting has disappeared from Katre’s equation here.