Foreign objects have always played a part in art, and they are crucial to the recirculatory nature of Putze's work. The artist's skill in finding foreign objects and his practice of recycling leftover bits and pieces identify him as a hunter-gatherer. Guided by an infallible aesthetic sense, he finds, hoards and sorts the written-off detritus of our modern throwaway society. His storeroom is brimming with anything and everything our consumer world has to offer. But however intuitive and playful his selection of banal everyday objects may appear, Putze's use of them and their combination with worked pieces of wood is invariably poised and consistent. A spätzle press becomes the head of a crane, a truck tyre metamorphoses into an oversized sea horse and an electric motor into the body of a cat...

But the main purpose of the scrap material, however striking, is to complement or contradict the wood. The sculptor is primarily interested in the fundamental nature of animals or people. His material - including wood carved with great aplomb, perfectionism and an eye for essential form - is merely a means to get closer to that fundamental nature, or to the alienation from it. Thomas Putze unfailingly succeeds in striking a balance between form and content.

His fantastical zoo is all topsy-turvy, with some of the human inhabitants displaying the many possible and impossible facets of existence. Instead of heads this human faction sports old empty cans. As so often in his work, Thomas Putze turns the established order upside down and opens a wide field of interpretation and dialogue.

 
(Excerpted from: Stefan Simon, ‘PUTZE CANNED', Museum Biedermann, 2013)