LEIPZIG.- „Once upon a time ...“ - so begin most stories - even Tobias Koebsch’s "Tales from the Hard Side", as told in pictures (oil and acrylic on canvas), and in his large pieces (mixed media). Tobias Koebsch (born in 1977 in Dresden) works show scenes that tell of an approaching end. Abandon areas torn apart, demolished, full of debris and sediments – the aftermath and remains of an apparently unexpected creeping disaster. Only the traces of people are visible, a T-shirt, a comic book monster, hundreds of colorful cars, symbols of a drive for mobility, piled to dizzying heights forming towers and canyons and everywhere graffiti - individual messages from someone to somebody.

Töbias Koebsch is not scoffing at the past, he wants to be 'a visionary realist'. Something must have happened in these lifeless apocalyptical surroundings. What that something is, he leaves to the viewer. He tells another tale; ours, which goes further on. He can live with the accusation that he is thinking typically German.

The future means disappearance and oblivion, over and over. That is not what people want to hear. The artist has no inhibition to show that. The calm after the storm is not an eerie silence, it is relief. In a way, he wants -that more happens...that the 'boiling points' be reached more often, for...destruction has potential, says Koebsch. "...and since we are not extinct, we are still alive today."