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6/9/2006

Artificial Lighting

Sara Tecchia Roma New York, New York

Featuring Matthias Koster, Marc Lueders and Klaus Wanker

Sara Tecchia Roma New York is proud to present an exhibition of new work by Matthias Koster, Marc Lueders and Klaus Wanker.

Matthias Koster uses cinema as the main vehicle of his quest for new painterly strategies. Inspired by the visions of Luis Bunuel and Federico Fellini and by the performances of the actors these directors embraced e.g. Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni, Koster watches movies closely, analytically, shooting obsessively during screenings in the attempt to find "the perfect picture we are all seeking." In his paintings cinematic space and time reverberate as source of light "but never using white as light, never painting white into the picture." His technique allows for both a transparency of color and vibrancy of light that derives from working a la prima, in one go. Koster explains: "I have been working on aluminum for the past three years, oil on aluminum requires you to work quickly, and that suits me perfectly." The result is a sensual and textural one that puts us, the viewers, in the condition of wanting to know more about these episodes.

Marc Lueders Figurs and Objekts is the meeting of opposites. He shoots photographs of constructions sites, abandoned parking lots and grassy landscapes. The desolate backdrops become the grounds on which anonymous figures cautiously wander or pause, staring into space or directly at us. Their sense of bewilderment is justified. Lueders paints his humans directly on the photographic background, abducting them from their previous and safe city life made of corners, crosswalks and sidewalks. Misplaced, they are frazzled, shaken, nervous. They seem to be asking themselves: "Where am I? Why am I here?" Lueders goes further, adding menacing oversized abstract objects that recall UFO's, lumpy rocks or meteors. Time and space are still in this new alien reality in which Lueder's conflates the real with the artificial.

Klaus Wanker paints the beautiful people manufactured by the media and fashion and beauty industries. Today perfect fashion and perfect beauty is the promise for affiliation and the brand of uniqueness. In the centre of the fashion world stand the models, only few of them famous as the clothes they wear, their job that of giving life to non-necessary objects. In Wanker's portraits they stand cool, aloof, static, their faces emotionless, frozen. The surface of these unvarnished paintings is as smooth as the glossy pages of the high-end fashion magazines that inspired them. Wanker takes slogans from street wear advertisements and traces them on the background: "Love Me", "Coolness." They function as subliminal messages that enforce the image, while pushing us, the viewers, to decipher the almost invisibly traced alphabetical characters. The girls, the poses, the accessories as artificial as the light that naturally illuminates them.

These three German-speaking artists all take cues from media - sublimating, transforming the artificial into something new. We get to watch.

Reception: Thursday, September 7, 2006 6-8pm

Sara Tecchia Roma New York
529 West 20th Street, between Tenth Avenue and Eleventh Avenue - New York
Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 6pm. For

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