BALANCING ACTS

BALANCING ACTS

Olaf Kühnemann

08.12.11- 13.01.12

Alon Segev Gallery | Tel Aviv

Opening: 08.12.11 | 8pm

Artist Talk: 30.12.11 | 11 am with Olaf Kühnemann and Friederike Schir

The name of the show references a struggle between two types of energy, each fundamental to the human condition. One is a structured energy- slow linear coherent. The other is intuitive- passionate and impulsive. These energies fluctuate in dominance and scale day to day, moment to moment. One does not have priority over the other. They are in constant struggle. The awareness of their existence is expressed by Olaf Kühnemann through the attempt of the maintain balance within these energies, and to also use and channel them.

Within the context of painting, these energies are assigned practical meaning through the physical actions involved. The initial preparation and stretching of the canvas are structured actions- A series of technical motions in a specific order with little room for expression. The first decision concerning this current group of work was to prepare each canvas with transparent rabbit-skin glue. As opposed to using a
white ground, this leaves the canvas bare and allows the first layers of paint to sink into the canvas, becoming a part of it.

Balancing Acts not only refers the working process, but also the final result. The second decision was to paint large groups of work simultaneously. Only in this way could these two types of energy be allowed to coexist, and to be expressed in many different directions; in the same and in separate paintings. Some of the works were made while referencing a photograph; others were arrived at through invention and imagination. Often, smaller paintings resulted after sustained periods of working on larger, more structured works. Here energy and physicality were allowed to shape and form the painting without the imposition of an external idea or narrative.

And even so, the abstract and non-specific will inevitably look like something. The clear boundaries of the painting dictate the horizontal and vertical elements. Paint that has been applied with no clear intention becomes . . . a balancing act.

Website Olaf Kühnemann
Round Table | 2011
Balancing Act | 2011
Branch Leaning on a Boy | 2011
Double Cover Up | 2011
Split Down the Middle | 2011
Sparkler | 2011

schir.net

BALANCING ACTS

Round Table | 2011

Balancing Act | 2011

Branch Leaning on a Boy | 2011

Double Cover Up | 2011

Split Down the Middle | 2011

Sparkler | 2011