Christoph Schmidberger
dal 6/10/2011 al 18/11/2011
Segnalato da
6/10/2011
Christoph Schmidberger
Union Gallery , London
A solo exhibition of paintings and drawing by LA based Austrian artist. Taking portraits of friends and acquaintances as his material, he documents a poetic world of nature and architecture, of private interiors and sunlit gardens.
UNION gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings and
drawing by LA based Austrian artist Christoph Schmidberger.
Christoph Schmidberger’s naturalistic, figurative paintings dispense a
certain sensuality coupled with a deliberate detachment. Taking portraits of
friends and acquaintances as his material, he documents a poetic world of
nature and architecture, of private interiors and sunlit gardens. The
meticulously executed surfaces of his paintings in oil and acrylic render
his subjects perfect and inscrutable, the sheen of their hair and eyes
highlighted almost to overexposure. Placed in classical poses their
protracted gaze lends an element of intrusion to the scene as if the viewer
were privy suddenly to unseen rooms and private moments.
Schmidberger often contradicts the realism in his paintings with exacting
areas of abstraction and dashes of chromatic enhancement. Any familiarity or
intimacy that might be afforded a scene or its subject is masked by an
immaculate and impersonal execution. Touching on the same subjects are his
works on paper. In contrast to his painting’s saturated and iridescent
palette, Schmidberger’s drawings are hyper ethereal and delicate studies in
black and white almost disappearing into the paper like photographic plates
or portraits from cinema’s golden age. The artist deliberately chooses
ambiguous titles for his works that are both redolent and misleading in the
context of his paintings. Removing the importance of his protagonists’
activities and identities, Schmidberger explores an image focused,
self-consumed LA lifestyle with an indifference much found in the work of
Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol; the protagonist’s guise reaffirming the
artist’s distinction between reality and his documentation of that reality.
‘In the seventies, Franz Gertsch's huge canvases were often interpreted as a
mere exercise in style, influenced by the American Hyperrealism of Chuck
Close and Richard Estes. It was only years later that we able to truly
appreciate Gertsch's intentions for what they really were: a celebration of
the Blow Up, the explosion of colour in cinema and European Hippy culture.
It is dangerous to make predictions in art, however the idea that in thirty
years or so the young, uninhibited and exhibitionist universe depicted by
Schmidberger may be seen as a portrait of the inconsistencies that marked
the first decade of the third millennium, is something more than a
suspicion.’
Michele Robecchi
Image: OPEN SORE - Graphite on Panel 2011
Private View 07/10/11 6-9pm
Union Gallery
94 Teesdale Street - London