Michael van Ofen
11 Oct - 18 Nov 2006
MICHAEL VAN OFEN
11 October – 18 November, 2006
Private View: Tuesday 10 October, 6 – 8 pm
“Painting after Modernism only found its raison d’être by leaving the real world and concentrating on itself, creating a hermetic asylum where it could survive...The aesthetic space, rejected by modern tendencies, has been reclaimed by Michael van Ofen’s paintings...This is no nostalgic attempt to revive the dead. Van Ofen is not interested in the relics of painting, but is convinced of the necessity to revive the experience it builds, as the only way to rescue painting from those who proclaim its demise every now and then.“
Doreet LeVitte Harten. Exhibition catalogue: Ex(o)DUS, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa (2001)
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce the first UK solo show of work by German artist Michael van Ofen. For his London exhibition, van Ofen will show a series of new works on canvas.
Portraits, flowers, still life, animals, landscapes, interiors, hunting scenes and historical events – all these themes (rejected by the moderns) are present in the paintings of Michael van Ofen. Frequently using Nineteenth century paintings as a basis for his work, Michael van Ofen deconstructs historical paintings into their painterly elements and reassembles them so that a new work, alienated from its roots yet faithful to its composition, is created. His subjects are stripped down to a structure of brushstrokes, so that the spectator’s perception hovers simultaneously between an awareness of the elements of the construction and their perception as allusive representation.
In a series of new works, Michael van Ofen uses existing pictures as his models, often paintings by artists of relatively minor art-historical recognition. Portraits, landscapes, and other figurative genres are used as starting points for his own endeavours. Where others emphasise the role of photography as a mode of painting, van Ofen rescues painting, relying only on what is evident in the painted image for reference.
Using a palette of nuanced colour, van Ofen makes strange images that would otherwise be familiar. A portrait is captured in only a handful of large fluid brushstrokes. In another work a single brushstroke evokes an entire landscape. Yet the simplicity of these beautifully economical paintings is deceptive; van Ofen will remove all paint from the canvas and rebuild the surface many times in the process of completing a work. In a constant slippage between abstraction and representation, it seems that, as Doreet LeVitte Harten has stated, “van Ofen has the best of all possible worlds. His work is abstract, but the narrative is not. It is connected with reality, but assumes this reality by means of methods unique to abstraction.”
Michael van Ofen was born in Essen, Germany (1956) and lives and works in Düsseldorf. Recent solo shows include Sies + Höke Galerie, Düsseldorf, and Galerie Johnen & Schöttle, Cologne. He has exhibited widely in museum group shows including Haus Lange/Haus Esters Krefeld, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel and Musee d`Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
11 October – 18 November, 2006
Private View: Tuesday 10 October, 6 – 8 pm
“Painting after Modernism only found its raison d’être by leaving the real world and concentrating on itself, creating a hermetic asylum where it could survive...The aesthetic space, rejected by modern tendencies, has been reclaimed by Michael van Ofen’s paintings...This is no nostalgic attempt to revive the dead. Van Ofen is not interested in the relics of painting, but is convinced of the necessity to revive the experience it builds, as the only way to rescue painting from those who proclaim its demise every now and then.“
Doreet LeVitte Harten. Exhibition catalogue: Ex(o)DUS, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa (2001)
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce the first UK solo show of work by German artist Michael van Ofen. For his London exhibition, van Ofen will show a series of new works on canvas.
Portraits, flowers, still life, animals, landscapes, interiors, hunting scenes and historical events – all these themes (rejected by the moderns) are present in the paintings of Michael van Ofen. Frequently using Nineteenth century paintings as a basis for his work, Michael van Ofen deconstructs historical paintings into their painterly elements and reassembles them so that a new work, alienated from its roots yet faithful to its composition, is created. His subjects are stripped down to a structure of brushstrokes, so that the spectator’s perception hovers simultaneously between an awareness of the elements of the construction and their perception as allusive representation.
In a series of new works, Michael van Ofen uses existing pictures as his models, often paintings by artists of relatively minor art-historical recognition. Portraits, landscapes, and other figurative genres are used as starting points for his own endeavours. Where others emphasise the role of photography as a mode of painting, van Ofen rescues painting, relying only on what is evident in the painted image for reference.
Using a palette of nuanced colour, van Ofen makes strange images that would otherwise be familiar. A portrait is captured in only a handful of large fluid brushstrokes. In another work a single brushstroke evokes an entire landscape. Yet the simplicity of these beautifully economical paintings is deceptive; van Ofen will remove all paint from the canvas and rebuild the surface many times in the process of completing a work. In a constant slippage between abstraction and representation, it seems that, as Doreet LeVitte Harten has stated, “van Ofen has the best of all possible worlds. His work is abstract, but the narrative is not. It is connected with reality, but assumes this reality by means of methods unique to abstraction.”
Michael van Ofen was born in Essen, Germany (1956) and lives and works in Düsseldorf. Recent solo shows include Sies + Höke Galerie, Düsseldorf, and Galerie Johnen & Schöttle, Cologne. He has exhibited widely in museum group shows including Haus Lange/Haus Esters Krefeld, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel and Musee d`Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.