Willehad Eilers / Wayne Horse
Tanz auf der Klinge. Hold Me is the first monograph by the artist Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse (b. 1981). This publication features works created between 2018 and 2023, presenting the many facets that make up the artist’s universe—from blind drawing to graffiti and monumental oil paintings. Eiler’s visual world, made up of grotesquely lewd scenes, reveals a generous portion of humor while exploring the darkest depths of society. Studio images and photographs from Eiler’s everyday life shed light on his creative process. This visual journey is accompanied by interviews with the artist, brief explanatory texts, and the notes that in many cases served as the starting points for the works depicted here.
Text in English and German.
Willehad Eilers (1981, Peine, Germany) also works under the pseudonym Wayne Horse. Beginning his career in the German graffiti scene, Eilers later went on to graduate from the RijksAkademie in Amsterdam. He continues to live and work in the Dutch capital today. His eclectic body of work comprises painting, drawing, video and installation, and is distinctive for its lyrical quality, playful humour and expressiveness. A recurring narrative in his oeuvre revolves around the bizarre, occasionally ugly but always compelling aspects of humanity.To refer to Willehad Eilers as an artist-ethnographer is not too much of a stretch. Describing his practice as an investigation of the heuristically learnt political and cultural mores that define contemporary society, Eilers gently nudges us towards a poetic realisation of our social selves through his highly performative range of paintings, videos and drawings. Infused with a mischievous, effortless confidence, Eilers’ crude-style works offer us anthropological insight into his observations of the flawed human condition and its perpetual evolution. He unflinchingly presents us with images that convey the disposition of the modern individual towards grotesque, even masturbatory obsessions. Underlying his practice is an artistic methodology that recalls the theorist James Clifford’s concept of “ethnographic surrealism”: he assails the quotidian situations that we think are familiar, and renders them unrecognisable. By mounting successive challenges to the hegemonic boundaries of our imagination, Eilers provokes his viewers into directly interacting with his highly unique works.