Opening exhibition "So..." with works by Martin Schnur and Ulrike Stubenböck on the occasion of the founding of the bechter kastowsky gallery in Vienna.
So... the time has come: the Bechter Kastowsky Gallery is opening! The first exhibition shows two different painterly positions that complement each other perfectly in their divergence - Martin Schnur and Ulrike Stubenböck.
"The works (Martin Schnur's) live from the polarity of two different images on the same painting ground, which tell a common or divergent story, which leads to a special dynamic. The motifs, predominantly people and landscapes, convey their content less through mimesis than through a mood or a feeling (...) The question of what is behind the picture thus becomes secondary, the composition remains unstable and could be destroyed at any time, but this is precisely what Martin Schnur is aiming for."
Simon Baur, Magical Iconoclasm, in Cat.: Martin Schnur. Schein, ed. Agnes Husslein-Arco, Belvedere, Vienna, 2008
Martin Schnur is no stranger to Vienna. Exciting pictorial structures, which are composed of supposedly romantic nature and scenic figuration, determine the pictorial neighbourhood in his paintings. The landscape often appears like a backdrop in the background, while a mystical scene takes place in front of it in a kind of picture frame of its own. Questions are raised about content, light and tension in what is depicted. The sculptor Joannis Avradmidis was Martin Schnur's professor at the academy. The treatment of the figure in its three-dimensionality was therefore already an important basis for the artist during his time as a student.
Over time, this question was increasingly transferred to the surface of the painting in order to provide answers that could not be more painterly: painted incidence of light, drapery or the painterly combination of two seemingly different scenes in one compact picture. Martin Schnur is always concerned with painting itself. Working in the technique of the old masters, he slowly approaches the finished picture. The starting point is an idea, an inspiration, such as the examination of the mirror in the new works. What happens when it lies broken on the forest floor? The diffuse light penetrates through the treetops, refracts in the mirror, dazzles the viewer, and yet in the splinter next to it, the branch hanging above it appears to be in the dark shadow area.
Martin Schnur's painting can neither be categorised in the hyperrealism of a Gertsch nor in the surreal imagery of the Leipzig School à la Neo Rauch. His painting style alternates between precise brushwork and an open "painting pranks" - and it is this contrast, alongside the picture-in-picture motif, that creates the tension and power in his work. In addition to new works on canvas and copper, the exhibition also includes sculptural works. Painting on copper, placed on a plinth for the viewer and made visible in the room.
The Essl Museum is dedicating a solo exhibition to Martin Schnur from spring 2013.
"For it is uncertain what shows itself in such a stroking way, what then only becomes certain in that moment when the temporary pause stops and the stroking thus comes to an end in a coherence: when empty and rich in one seems, when moved comes to rest, when mixed clarifies what is echo, shadow of painting as painting."
Michael Donhauser, Kaum - Fast - Nur, in Cat: Ulrike Stubenböck, Shades of Hammershøi, ed. Wolfgang Meighörner and Inge Praxmarer, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, 2010
Ulrike Stubenböck's square canvases follow an exact system. The system of colour, chance and the linear guidance of the tool. The square as the form of the picture support is also an important constant in her painting - a format that is detached from the imagination of a landscape with a recognisable horizon, but is equally free from the association of a standing figure within it. Pure form and pure colour enter into a symbiosis that can only be calculated by the painter to a limited extent. The starting point for her works is a meticulously defined colour palette, from which she combines three colours at a time. These colours, applied impasto in horizontal strokes to the support, are then mixed together. In a process that tends to be meditative, they are blended together with a palette knife, always in the direction of writing and in one go - "failure" is implied: If the result does not work, the work is inevitably lost - there is no correction. Painting is thus led to an end point in its precise stance and its scientific canon of ideas, but is not left to the last consequence - a confrontation that carries the "crisis of the panel painting" within it. What should this medium convey in terms of content now that painting has died several deaths in the 20th century?
Ulrike Stubenböck finds her own analytical approach to painting - a quiet, calm result based on light colour spaces.
In recent years, Ulrike Stubenböck has shown her work in solo exhibitions at the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck, Admont Abbey and the Kunstraum Engländerbau in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, among others.
