Albrecht Schnider
25 Apr - 24 May 2014
ALBRECHT SCHNIDER
Beyond the lines
25 April – 24 May 2014
AKINCI is proud to present new works by internationally renown artist Albrecht Schnider.
Both Schnider’s precise abstract paintings and sculptural objects take as their source the delicate explorations of shifting planes and geometric forms found in the artist’s drawings. Though the artist’s paintings demonstrate a restrained elegance, their source drawings, swiftly sketched at the end of each day in the studio, are products of a spontaneous, intuitive process. While many of these drawings remain simply exercises, never emerging from their sketchbook, others are singled out by the artist for further exploration.
Their oppositions of line and surface, presence and absence, are distilled and translated into the larger, more rigid compositions of Schnider’s paintings. Certain hard‐edged forms are filled with matte pigment or reflective metallic, while others are left blank. The contiguity and overlap of these planes of colour and negative space toy with our sense of perception, leading us to question whether we are gazing at shattered parts of a fragmented whole or the layers and voids of a three‐dimensional pictorial window. When we look at Albrecht Schnider’s figurative and abstract drawings and paintings, they are reminiscent of things that lie behind us; they point to the void and they prefigure something new.
Albrecht Schnider (1958, Luzern) is one of the most idiosyncratic painters at work. This is due not so much to his subjects, which comprise the traditional genres of art history such as landscape, figurative painting and still life as well as abstract works. It is more on account of the individual and highly distinctive attitude and direction he follows in terms of both form and content.
Exhibition concept in collaboration with Birgit Szepanski, Berlin
Beyond the lines
25 April – 24 May 2014
AKINCI is proud to present new works by internationally renown artist Albrecht Schnider.
Both Schnider’s precise abstract paintings and sculptural objects take as their source the delicate explorations of shifting planes and geometric forms found in the artist’s drawings. Though the artist’s paintings demonstrate a restrained elegance, their source drawings, swiftly sketched at the end of each day in the studio, are products of a spontaneous, intuitive process. While many of these drawings remain simply exercises, never emerging from their sketchbook, others are singled out by the artist for further exploration.
Their oppositions of line and surface, presence and absence, are distilled and translated into the larger, more rigid compositions of Schnider’s paintings. Certain hard‐edged forms are filled with matte pigment or reflective metallic, while others are left blank. The contiguity and overlap of these planes of colour and negative space toy with our sense of perception, leading us to question whether we are gazing at shattered parts of a fragmented whole or the layers and voids of a three‐dimensional pictorial window. When we look at Albrecht Schnider’s figurative and abstract drawings and paintings, they are reminiscent of things that lie behind us; they point to the void and they prefigure something new.
Albrecht Schnider (1958, Luzern) is one of the most idiosyncratic painters at work. This is due not so much to his subjects, which comprise the traditional genres of art history such as landscape, figurative painting and still life as well as abstract works. It is more on account of the individual and highly distinctive attitude and direction he follows in terms of both form and content.
Exhibition concept in collaboration with Birgit Szepanski, Berlin