![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Hunger nach Bildern
VERNISSAGE: 03. Juli 2020, 12-18 Uhr
DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASEJOELLE DUBOIS (1990, Gent)
Dubois Arbeiten beleuchten mit Ironie und Pragmatik die Kehrseiten digitaler Kultur. Die entblößenden Szenen einer Gesellschaft, die sich selber in den latent narzisstischen Selbstdarstellungen anderer reflektiert, kreisen um Sexualität, Einsamkeit und Selbstreflexion. Diesem Themenkomplex widmet sich Dubois auf eine ironische und auch komische Weise mit Leidenschaft in ihren Werken. Sie zeigt ihre Protagonisten exponiert und ungeschönt mit einem drastischen Realismus, der in der digitalen Welt oft sehr verzerrt und geschönt wird. Bei all dem ist sie selbst eine stille Beobachterin und schaut der Welt in ihrer eigenen Zurschaustellung eines eigenwilligen Perfektionismus zu. In den Bildnarrativen spielt der voyeuristische Blick auf intime Momente Wahrhaftigkeit vor, die Nacktheit der Figuren macht diese zutiefst verletzlich. Doch die allgegenwärtige Beschäftigung der gezeigten Personen mit dem Smartphone oder ähnlichen Tools lässt ihre Aura zwischen ignoranter Besessenheit und traurigster Apathie pulsieren.
ANYA JANSSEN (1962, NL)
MICHAEL KALMBACH (1962, Landau)
Es entstehen märchenhaft anmutende Szenarien, von traumwandlerischen, entrückten Knabengestalten bevölkert. Ihre Figur ist oft nur angedeutet, erscheint sich durch die flüssige Kontur schemenhaft an der Oberfläche abzuzeichnen, um sogleich wieder zu verschwimmen, sich mit einer anderen Kurve zu vereinigen.
STEPHAN MELZ (1959, Basel)
ULRICH PESTER (1980, Hannover)
LEIF TRENKLER (1960, Wiesbaden)
Julia Jansen's paintings are pictures of pictures. With deliberately placed, visible brush strokes that clearly expose the painterly medium, Jansen draws less attention to the depicted object, but rather refers to the form of media representation. The motifs shown are quickly named and have no iconographic value. Instead, numerous variations of a subject show Jansen's interest in formal questions. Blurred, as viewed through a milky window or a misted mirror, the objects, whose soft contours also suggest the imprecise focus in photography, are alienated by various, overlapping painting styles. Jansen's sovereign technique explores the fine line between reality and appearance. Instead of focusing on the visible reality and its concrete manifestations, Jansen emphasizes the effects on the sense of sight and thus the influences on the perception associated with conveying the image.
ANYA JANSSEN (1962, NL)
The question of how human beings relate to themselves and their environment , and of what determines their development, is a recurring theme in the work of Anya Janssen. In “The House” Anya Janssen distorts a linear experience of time. She lets the past coincide with the present and by doing so she tells the tale of a house. The place itself is characterized by a turbulent and long history. Janssen accepted the idea that memories and events are bound to physical places. Janssen's work tells stories through impressions. In a series of narrative paintings and drawings, she achieves a very close, direct relationship to her subject. The painted objects, bodies and places are given a simmering tension below the painterly surface. Her meticulous style allows her to fill lifeless objects with a balanced sense of both whim and resignation. By using distortion, transparency and an alienating light, Janssen translates reality and all its facets to the canvas.
MICHAEL KALMBACH (*1962, Landau)
The starting point of Michael Kalmbach's images is a collection of undefined, large-scale blobs. Kalmbach drips and sprinkles colored water in a random manner on damp sheets of paper, the excess liquid accumulating in puddles, so that during the drying process deposits of pigments coagulate into islands of color of different intensities. This irregular, flesh-colored stain rug is the amorphous breeding ground from which the visual worlds of Michael Kalmbach originate. The untamed all-over gets structured, arrangements of physiognomic features and body parts make faces and shapes recognizable. Fairytale-like scenarios emerge, populated by dreamy, rapt boys. Their figure is often only hinted at, seams to appear as a shadow on the surface due to the liquid contour, in order to immediately blur again, to unite with another curve.
STEPHAN MELZ (*1959, Basel)
The small-format paintings of Stephan Melzl have an exquisite coloring, the intense luminosity of which comes from a slow, glazing application of paint. Melzl applies himself to painting according to a design drawing that structures the picture surface like a first scaffold. From his concentrated observation of the layers of light and transparent color tones, the picture results. Melzl's masterful technique makes everything possible, it causes the harmonious coexistence of disparate elements in the picture and creates a reality in which contradictions appear harmonious and the logic of the dream condenses the levels of action. This beautiful appearance, which unifies everything, is sometimes anarchic. Melzl often takes on important individual works or traditional pictorial formulas from art history and supplements the quotation with motifs from a completely different context. The discrepancy between elegant painting and the sometimes-bizarre subjects presented, between perfect form and enigmatic content, creates the peculiar tension inherent in Stephan Melzl's paintings.
ULRICH PESTER (*1980, Hannover)
Search is at the center of his artistic act. Ulrich Pester is concerned with the ongoing process from which independent pictorial forms emerge. Ideas for his subjects can be found everywhere: in everyday engagement with film and the Internet, but also his own drawings or everyday observations can become the starting point for his work. Image potential hidden in banal things develops its own dynamic and autonomy through subtle twists during the painting process. His work impresses with its formal clarity. Far from committing himself to a style or a method, Pester always finds new approaches in his painterly explorations. His image inventions in his new works are correspondingly varied and surprising. In addition to abstract, figurative and graphic subjects, his motifs are tromp-l'œil effects, art historical references, ironic puns or subtle visual jokes.
LEIF TRENKLER (*1960, Wiesbaden)
Leif Trenkler is one of the first representatives of the new figuration in Germany and shaped this direction of contemporary art with his characteristic style. His realistic paintings capture snapshots. The often-loud atmosphere of his work develops its own stimuli for the senses, just like you can smell plants in the evening or the freshly sheared grass in the early afternoon. Even if the paintings by the artist, who was born in Wiesbaden in 1960, can be located in the here and now, his works form clear references to past epochs of painting. It is especially the configuration of color, pictorial medium and stylistically significant figurative painting that shows his interest in far older models. A fine feeling for the atmosphere on site is also evident in his paintings. Yet Trenkler never sets up his easel outdoors. In his memory he collects the impressions he receives on his travels. The camera assists him. “Painting follows its own laws. It's about color, gradients, dramaturgy and composition. How does a pink match orange, what weight does a drop of yellow have compared to a 30-centimeter surface in dark green, and how does all this relate to people or to architecture or the landscape?
Künstler:
Joelle Dubois / Julia Jansen / Anya Janssen / Michael Kalmbach / Stephan Melzl / Ulrich Pester / Leif Trenkler