Holger Endres
29 Apr - 04 Jun 2011
HOLGER ENDRES
29 April - 4 June, 2011
Large-format works on canvas and photographs make up what is already the third solo exhibition by Holger Endres at Galerie Bernd Kugler.
For Endres, painting is a planned activity, obeying an underlying concept. The artist treats the canvases with a transparent primer upon which white areas are applied in a specific format. The distance between the limits of the canvas and the edges of a colour field varies in this process and as it does so, defines the dimensions of the white surface. Endres allows his act of painting to remain visible, or rather, its trace in such grain and irregularity as might come about. The consistency of the surface and the density of the paint prevent the eye from penetrating beyond; there is no falling into virtual depths; all that is disclosed is the lack of spatial depth. The surfaces of these paintings stop the eye there and then. Attempts to get their measure, visually, will fail, gaze rebuffed, no bearings, the viewer stranded.
What the painting of Holger Endres ponders and analyses, is not the foundations and potential of that medium. Rather, he strives to have painting accord as closely as possible to his subjective feelings: to reflect himself as an artist as he draws upon his own self, with recourse to his own experiences and encounters. It is a pared-down painting with which he confronts his viewers and presents them, as well as himself, with the challenge of experiencing the picture vitally and of opening oneself to it anew, every time.
In the current show, in addition to the works on canvas, Endres has included photographs. The subject of these works is explicitly the artist in person – they show his face, sporting a black line painted on it with a brush. The photographs record a painting happening in which Endres himself is the picture support, as it were the canvas; he assumes a stance that engages directly with the camera. While the line does not change, the aspect of time becomes visible in the changing presence of the artist behind the line.
29 April - 4 June, 2011
Large-format works on canvas and photographs make up what is already the third solo exhibition by Holger Endres at Galerie Bernd Kugler.
For Endres, painting is a planned activity, obeying an underlying concept. The artist treats the canvases with a transparent primer upon which white areas are applied in a specific format. The distance between the limits of the canvas and the edges of a colour field varies in this process and as it does so, defines the dimensions of the white surface. Endres allows his act of painting to remain visible, or rather, its trace in such grain and irregularity as might come about. The consistency of the surface and the density of the paint prevent the eye from penetrating beyond; there is no falling into virtual depths; all that is disclosed is the lack of spatial depth. The surfaces of these paintings stop the eye there and then. Attempts to get their measure, visually, will fail, gaze rebuffed, no bearings, the viewer stranded.
What the painting of Holger Endres ponders and analyses, is not the foundations and potential of that medium. Rather, he strives to have painting accord as closely as possible to his subjective feelings: to reflect himself as an artist as he draws upon his own self, with recourse to his own experiences and encounters. It is a pared-down painting with which he confronts his viewers and presents them, as well as himself, with the challenge of experiencing the picture vitally and of opening oneself to it anew, every time.
In the current show, in addition to the works on canvas, Endres has included photographs. The subject of these works is explicitly the artist in person – they show his face, sporting a black line painted on it with a brush. The photographs record a painting happening in which Endres himself is the picture support, as it were the canvas; he assumes a stance that engages directly with the camera. While the line does not change, the aspect of time becomes visible in the changing presence of the artist behind the line.