Frank Ahlgrimm
dal 15/9/2005 al 22/10/2005
Segnalato da
15/9/2005
Frank Ahlgrimm
Galerie Reinhard Hauff, Stuttgart
Hunting-ground. In large scale compositions of intriguing visual complexity, the artist combines pictorial elements such as text and figure with plain surfaces of geometrical colourfields. Similar to how a collage is constructed by addition of various elements and materials, he builds up his compositions with a succession of dense layers.
Hunting-ground
Concurring with the Art Alarm program of the City of Stuttgart, Galerie
Reinhard Hauff is pleased to announce
its first one-man show by the Cologne painter Frank Ahlgrimm (*1965), who
studied at the Stuttgart Art Academy until 1998. In large scale compositions
of intriguing viisual complexity, Ahlgrimm combines pictorial elements such
as text and figure with plain surfaces of geometrical colourfields. Similar
to how a collage is constructed by addition of various elements and/or
materials, Ahlgrimm builds up his compositions with a succession of dense
layers. The compact, high-tech surface texture contrasts with the fast
moving effects of signs and symbols derived from/or ressembling commercial
logoÅ’s, media and advertisement slogans applied with thick, gestural
brushstrokes. Text and figure work together - not as a statement or comment
on each other, but as seemingly random ornament only subliminally
comprehensible: a kneeling figure is formed by a patch of text fragment, or
a text fragment is contained within a distorted geometric shape.
In the exhibition 'hunting-ground', Ahlgrimm shows a selection of his latest
works, taking the background flicker and striped colour synchrony correction
band on the TV monitor as a painted point of departure and frame of
reference for floating spaces, where figural motives reduced to their
outline shapes overlap. The structural affinity to TVÅ’s flickering, fleeting
and cramped picture frame is represented in AhlgrimmÅ’s compositions by
hovering, vibrating, candy-colourbands contrasting optically to the
meticulously smooth, muted surfaces of the pastel coloured background areas.
Reflecting an ongoing search for new esthetic effects, AhlgrimmÅ’s paintings
compress information to create unique, synthetic pictorial universes. They
become coded bearers of media- reality and the muptiple possibilities of
'seeing' to which we have now become accustomed through digital manipulation
programs such as photoshop. 'When is your point of no return?' is the title
of one of the paintings in the show, but also a commentary on AhlgrimmÅ’s
working methods. Ahlgrimm experiments with new pictorial territory and takes
his manipulation of form and colour close to a point where visual legibility
dissolves - just to that point where the tension between elements juxtaposed
on the canvas will still hold the composition together.
Image: Frank Ahlgrimm, 'hunting-ground', 2005, Oil on Canvas, 248 x 420 cm (2 Parts)
Opening: Friday 16 September 2005, 7 pm
Galerie Reinhard Hauff
Paulinenstr. 47
D-70178 Stuttgart