Philipp Fröhlich
25 Feb - 31 Mar 2010
PHILIPP FRÖHLICH
"Scare the Night Away"
Inauguration: February 25, to March 31, 2010
The German painter, Philipp Fröhlich (Schweinfurt, 1975), presents his second individual exhibition at the Galería Soledad Lorenzo consisting of twelve paintings executed in tempera over a period of the last two years.
Philipp Fröhlich's work is characterized by layers of color superimposed in faint brush-strokes, thus creating a fragmented surface of translucent elements. The artist gradually outlines and contrasts multiple coats of tempera in keeping with his concept of painting as the static result of a temporal and dynamic process made visible not only in the result itself but also in its structure, all for the purpose of drawing the eye of the viewer into its unfathomable, dream-like depths. The evolution of this procedure could be summarized as reflection, evocation and representation. The subject matter is inevitably drawn variously from fortuitous events reported in newspapers and periodicals, the recollection of certain literary passages or even verses of a musical composition, none of the particulars of which are ever revealed. These inspirations are materialized in the studio by means of prototypes, at times full-scale models, constructed down to the last detail of the imagined scene of the drama, later to be captured on canvas.
The pictorial whole feigns a certain reality, albeit a reality disintegrated into a veritable conglomerate, poised on the frontier between abstraction and figuration, reality and fiction, vision and intuition. Each of these paintings is a complex labyrinth evolving into a lucid reality all its own, uniquely transfixed in an undulating sea of tinged colors and flashes of light. Fröhlich further enhances these effects by means of a diffused focus that enables us to contemplate the work in its entirety from the stand point of an exceptionally imaginative plastic force, seducing the eye to search out the painting's focal point of energy.
Among the works on exhibit are four paintings related to the still-life genre featuring diverse objects placed in four domestic environments based on the artist's own scenographic prototypes; a small kitchen, a terrace and two rooms. The unpretentious arrangement of these everyday objects --a drill, a steel kettle and several terra-cotta pots-- is in marked contrast to the traditional characteristics of the vanitas still life, thus converting the `all-is-vanity' moralising message into something intriguingly suggestive rather than metaphorical, stripped as it is of the habitual iconographic symbols. It is an allegory as occult as the sinister incidents hidden among the splendors of the series of nocturnal paintings in which mysterious lights suddenly break through the darkness, `scaring the night away ́, the phrase which also serves as the title of this exhibition.
Fröhlich's captivating play of luminous reflections, developed by the artist to an admirable degree in this new series of paintings, reveals a deeply moving poetic essence, throbbing in the echoes and rhythms which reverberate in all of his work, generating a uniquely enriched surface, vibrating in frenetic pulsebeats, compelling us to enter into the solitary places that he depicts, endowed with the inexplicable and radiant light of mystery. A dense all-enveloping atmosphere and refined detail prevail, where form, color and subtle gestures are the sole interpreters of the appearance and significance of isolated realities which, although troubling in their content, raise the spirit into the realms of enigma, into the anxiety of the unresolved, and into the delicious world of uncertainty.
Kristian Leahy.
Translation: James Leahy
"Scare the Night Away"
Inauguration: February 25, to March 31, 2010
The German painter, Philipp Fröhlich (Schweinfurt, 1975), presents his second individual exhibition at the Galería Soledad Lorenzo consisting of twelve paintings executed in tempera over a period of the last two years.
Philipp Fröhlich's work is characterized by layers of color superimposed in faint brush-strokes, thus creating a fragmented surface of translucent elements. The artist gradually outlines and contrasts multiple coats of tempera in keeping with his concept of painting as the static result of a temporal and dynamic process made visible not only in the result itself but also in its structure, all for the purpose of drawing the eye of the viewer into its unfathomable, dream-like depths. The evolution of this procedure could be summarized as reflection, evocation and representation. The subject matter is inevitably drawn variously from fortuitous events reported in newspapers and periodicals, the recollection of certain literary passages or even verses of a musical composition, none of the particulars of which are ever revealed. These inspirations are materialized in the studio by means of prototypes, at times full-scale models, constructed down to the last detail of the imagined scene of the drama, later to be captured on canvas.
The pictorial whole feigns a certain reality, albeit a reality disintegrated into a veritable conglomerate, poised on the frontier between abstraction and figuration, reality and fiction, vision and intuition. Each of these paintings is a complex labyrinth evolving into a lucid reality all its own, uniquely transfixed in an undulating sea of tinged colors and flashes of light. Fröhlich further enhances these effects by means of a diffused focus that enables us to contemplate the work in its entirety from the stand point of an exceptionally imaginative plastic force, seducing the eye to search out the painting's focal point of energy.
Among the works on exhibit are four paintings related to the still-life genre featuring diverse objects placed in four domestic environments based on the artist's own scenographic prototypes; a small kitchen, a terrace and two rooms. The unpretentious arrangement of these everyday objects --a drill, a steel kettle and several terra-cotta pots-- is in marked contrast to the traditional characteristics of the vanitas still life, thus converting the `all-is-vanity' moralising message into something intriguingly suggestive rather than metaphorical, stripped as it is of the habitual iconographic symbols. It is an allegory as occult as the sinister incidents hidden among the splendors of the series of nocturnal paintings in which mysterious lights suddenly break through the darkness, `scaring the night away ́, the phrase which also serves as the title of this exhibition.
Fröhlich's captivating play of luminous reflections, developed by the artist to an admirable degree in this new series of paintings, reveals a deeply moving poetic essence, throbbing in the echoes and rhythms which reverberate in all of his work, generating a uniquely enriched surface, vibrating in frenetic pulsebeats, compelling us to enter into the solitary places that he depicts, endowed with the inexplicable and radiant light of mystery. A dense all-enveloping atmosphere and refined detail prevail, where form, color and subtle gestures are the sole interpreters of the appearance and significance of isolated realities which, although troubling in their content, raise the spirit into the realms of enigma, into the anxiety of the unresolved, and into the delicious world of uncertainty.
Kristian Leahy.
Translation: James Leahy