Cornelius Völker
27 Oct - 20 Dec 2012
CORNELIUS VÖLKER
New Paintings
27 October 2012 - 20 December 2012
ANDREAS GRIMM MUNCHEN is delighted to announce a new exhibition by Düsseldorf and New York based painter Cornelius Völker. This will be the artist's 6th solo show with the gallery. On view will be new works from 2012. His most recent solo exhibitions in 2011/12 include the Museum Villa Stuck, München, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen, Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, and the Von-der Heydt-Museum (Kunsthalle Barmen) in Wuppertal. Since 2005 Mr. Völker is the professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Münster.
Cornelius Völker shows interest in the banal and everyday commodities. In his mainly large scale paintings he elevates bread and butter, flip-flops, chocolate bars, lap dogs or people doing the most trivial things into the realm of honorable art motives. The emphasized banality of the motives has to be seen in a stark contrast to the sheer scale of the images as well as the “noble” medium of painting.
Stylistically, the new images set new priorities. With their strong dark-light-contrasts and a rough brushwork, they are comparable to the older works, though they move further from everyday commodities to pure form – and it’s dissolution.
In terms of content, the artist moves beyond his theme of prosaicness by shifting his artistic eye away from humans or animals and instead focuses on trace: Blank notes that are glued to the wall with tape, crumpled newspapers, organic leftovers dissolving crushed in puddles of color.
These pictures let the view get into questions of form and mediality. The everyday commodities are getting lost if one asks who could have left such traces behind. The canvas, the medium, shows empty paper, which unmasks itself through the stroke of the brush as canvas. The Formula “The medium is the message” turns around. Cornelius Völker emphasizes this pitching moment between becoming a form and it’s own dissolvement in the medium of painting in his new works.
Simultaneously the artist captures a somewhat melancholic aesthetic, which nurtures itself from a binary of presence of left behind traces and the absence of living.
The images can be seen as a modern version of still life paintings and the associated memento mori theme. And yet the traces of absent life are also traces of the repertoire of classical still life paintings: The puddles, reminding of crushed fruits or bloodpuddles, refer as leftover traces of the existing to death and ruin, while the empty sheets can be read as allegories of fading memory.
Putting the focus on form and medium the artist interprets a classic genre of painting in an absolutely new way.
New Paintings
27 October 2012 - 20 December 2012
ANDREAS GRIMM MUNCHEN is delighted to announce a new exhibition by Düsseldorf and New York based painter Cornelius Völker. This will be the artist's 6th solo show with the gallery. On view will be new works from 2012. His most recent solo exhibitions in 2011/12 include the Museum Villa Stuck, München, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen, Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, and the Von-der Heydt-Museum (Kunsthalle Barmen) in Wuppertal. Since 2005 Mr. Völker is the professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Münster.
Cornelius Völker shows interest in the banal and everyday commodities. In his mainly large scale paintings he elevates bread and butter, flip-flops, chocolate bars, lap dogs or people doing the most trivial things into the realm of honorable art motives. The emphasized banality of the motives has to be seen in a stark contrast to the sheer scale of the images as well as the “noble” medium of painting.
Stylistically, the new images set new priorities. With their strong dark-light-contrasts and a rough brushwork, they are comparable to the older works, though they move further from everyday commodities to pure form – and it’s dissolution.
In terms of content, the artist moves beyond his theme of prosaicness by shifting his artistic eye away from humans or animals and instead focuses on trace: Blank notes that are glued to the wall with tape, crumpled newspapers, organic leftovers dissolving crushed in puddles of color.
These pictures let the view get into questions of form and mediality. The everyday commodities are getting lost if one asks who could have left such traces behind. The canvas, the medium, shows empty paper, which unmasks itself through the stroke of the brush as canvas. The Formula “The medium is the message” turns around. Cornelius Völker emphasizes this pitching moment between becoming a form and it’s own dissolvement in the medium of painting in his new works.
Simultaneously the artist captures a somewhat melancholic aesthetic, which nurtures itself from a binary of presence of left behind traces and the absence of living.
The images can be seen as a modern version of still life paintings and the associated memento mori theme. And yet the traces of absent life are also traces of the repertoire of classical still life paintings: The puddles, reminding of crushed fruits or bloodpuddles, refer as leftover traces of the existing to death and ruin, while the empty sheets can be read as allegories of fading memory.
Putting the focus on form and medium the artist interprets a classic genre of painting in an absolutely new way.