Paul Schwer
dal 9/11/2011 al 13/1/2012
Segnalato da
Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer Press
9/11/2011
Paul Schwer
Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf
'Pets' refers to the mineral-oil-based material from which several of the artist's coloured, folded and crumpled sculptures and painting-objects are made - and which populate the show like the eponymous domestic companions, across the floor, on pedestals and on the walls.
Following our solo exhibitions of his work in 2004, 2007, 2009 and, the most recent, as a solo presentation at the Art Cologne's Open Space in 2010, Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer now presents the exhibition, "Pets" - an installation, new sculptures and paintings by Paul Schwer.
'Pets' refers to the mineral-oil-based material from which several of the artist's coloured, folded and crumpled sculptures and painting-objects are made - and which populate the show like the eponymous domestic companions, across the floor, on pedestals and on the walls.
In the gallery space looking onto Neustrasse, a wall begins to sway with light and colour: light and colour 'tumbling' toward the viewer.
Aluminium panels with reflective foil and screen prints of street scenes in Viet Nam reflect themselves and the surroundings back into the space, altered, at every motion and, as installations do, demand that the visitor perambulates.
Since the 1990s, Paul Schwer has been pursuing research 'in progress' and with single-minded experimental inquisitiveness, dedicated to his particular concept of painting. Between the two poles of painting and sculpture, his interest circles around the interlocking of colour, space, light and movement, as Stephan Berg writes in a text on the artist whose materials originate in many cases from a technological, industrial context - racks, fluorescent tubes, acrylic glass, hard polystyrene foam - but who choreographs them to emanate an almost poetic elation and softness; such sets oscillating permanently between constructional equilibrium and breakneck dynamism. Only at a few points does real painting still take centre stage, yet everything in this cosmos is of highly painterly orientation. What becomes manifest to us, is, as it were, the creation of painting out of the not-painted: for example when Schwer places fluorescent tubes as if they were strokes of the brush. As provisional and transient, almost nonchalant an entry all this makes, it is still, incontrovertibly, finalised for the specific occasion at hand, as it were and as Hegel would have put it, perfect in its eternal imperfectability. The whole œuvre is always simultaneously physical and ephemeral, constructional skeleton meets transparent and translucent materials and in the process coalesces into an all-round-view overall organism in which inside and outside, top and bottom interpenetrate and blur, all dissolving into a tilting, slantwise, hazardous sliding motion.
Paul Schwer (*1951) lives and works in Düsseldorf and studied at the Kunstakademie there, under Erwin Heerich. Important solo shows in museums in recent years have included those at Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen (2004), Kunsthalle Lingen (2006), Museum Schloss Moyland (2008), Reichsabtei Kornelimünster near Aachen in 2008, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (2009) and the Kunstverein/Kunsthalle in Bremerhaven (2011). Paul Schwer currently holds a chair for painting at the Kunstakademie in Münster.
Image: Paul Schwer: Installation at "Open Space", 2010
Detail, mixed media
Opening: 10 November 2011 - 18:00
Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer
Heinrich-Heine-Allee 19 - Dusseldorf
Gallery open Tuesday – Friday 12 noon – 6 pm; Saturday 12 noon – 4pm; and by appointment
Admission free