Exploring Painting
09 Jun - 27 Jul 2012
EXPLORING PAINTING
Defraoui, Khatami, Mosset, Rockenschaub, Schiess
9 June – 27 July 2012
In celebration of Open House Weekend on June 9 and 10, Galerie Susanna Kulli opens an exhibition of selected works by Silvie Defraoui (video), Shila Khatami, Olivier Mosset, Gerwald Rockenschaub, and Adrian Schiess that presents explorations of painting.
The “zeitgeist” in art sometimes seems to reflect the fact that ultimately everything is possible today, in terms of content as much as its visual translation. The different works by these five artists illustrate that situation, but they also exemplify a deliberate engagement with diversity, a process of careful selection. The artists regard it as an essential part of their stance to take their own work seriously, and they communicate that seriousness to their audiences.
In Olivier Mosset (1944), it is gigantic surfaces, highly simplified forms, and clear colors as well as repetition that constitute the radicalism of his painting. For Adrian Schiess (1959), painting is always the foremost issue. Acrylic paintings present a classical landscape motif, but may at once also be read as pastose and abstract color field paintings whose primary emphasis is on the material: the artist examines his relationship with the phenomena of nature. Gerwald Rockenschaub (1952), an Austrian artist of considerable international renown, is also a successful (Techno) musician and DJ; music is part of his cultural background. Analytical thinking and the principle of reduction to a few essential elements and structures define Rockenschaub’s work. In the art of Shila Khatami (1976), gestural painting and geometry call each other in question; art-historical allusions and references alien to art interact in paintings steeped in history and charged with information about contemporary society.
The video works of Silvie Defraoui (1935) are journeys into the rich complexity of history and its stories, where meaning and the absurd meet. Allusions to Oriental and Western cultures clash; mechanisms of recollection play with a wide range of decorative elements.
Defraoui, Khatami, Mosset, Rockenschaub, Schiess
9 June – 27 July 2012
In celebration of Open House Weekend on June 9 and 10, Galerie Susanna Kulli opens an exhibition of selected works by Silvie Defraoui (video), Shila Khatami, Olivier Mosset, Gerwald Rockenschaub, and Adrian Schiess that presents explorations of painting.
The “zeitgeist” in art sometimes seems to reflect the fact that ultimately everything is possible today, in terms of content as much as its visual translation. The different works by these five artists illustrate that situation, but they also exemplify a deliberate engagement with diversity, a process of careful selection. The artists regard it as an essential part of their stance to take their own work seriously, and they communicate that seriousness to their audiences.
In Olivier Mosset (1944), it is gigantic surfaces, highly simplified forms, and clear colors as well as repetition that constitute the radicalism of his painting. For Adrian Schiess (1959), painting is always the foremost issue. Acrylic paintings present a classical landscape motif, but may at once also be read as pastose and abstract color field paintings whose primary emphasis is on the material: the artist examines his relationship with the phenomena of nature. Gerwald Rockenschaub (1952), an Austrian artist of considerable international renown, is also a successful (Techno) musician and DJ; music is part of his cultural background. Analytical thinking and the principle of reduction to a few essential elements and structures define Rockenschaub’s work. In the art of Shila Khatami (1976), gestural painting and geometry call each other in question; art-historical allusions and references alien to art interact in paintings steeped in history and charged with information about contemporary society.
The video works of Silvie Defraoui (1935) are journeys into the rich complexity of history and its stories, where meaning and the absurd meet. Allusions to Oriental and Western cultures clash; mechanisms of recollection play with a wide range of decorative elements.