This group exhibition at Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska showcases five contemporary artists whose works, while widely diverse in conception and expression, are united by their intense colors, abstract qualities, and preoccupation with geometric forms, making for exciting dialogues on the gallery’s walls.

CHARLOTTE GIACOBBI’s (b. Berlin, DE, 1988) work grapples with geometric forms that yield an interplay of painstakingly computed perspectives, scintillating colors, and fragile elements. By treating all the materials she uses as equipollent, the artist accentuates the physical potential of her pictures: “When painting can complement the idea of the body as material substance, and in particular when it shows itself to be an ongoing process, its kinship with us comes to the fore.” The stretcher frame, which ordinarily defines a picture’s bounds, comes to be part of her work and at once its unique feature. It contributes to a shift of perspectives whose dimensions are fully revealed only in the interaction with the beholder’s angle of view, while also sustaining an expansion of the pictorial space onto the wall and its surroundings that awakens the static object to a virtual life of its own.

After dedicating himself to painting landscapes in a reduced palette for over two decades, CAMERON MARTIN (b. Seattle, Wash., 1970) shifted a few years ago toward a radical new style in intensely colorful abstract and geometric forms. His insistent and systematic exploration of their potentials yielded the five works on view in the exhibition. The techniques MARTIN employs create the impression that distinguishing between the handmade and the mechanical is virtually impossible. The designs are transferred to the canvas using complex stencils that the artist develops on the computer and coated with several thin layers of acrylic paint. The various patterns, stylized basket weaves, bobbing circles, and flowing lines look like prints, engendering a shimmering optical effect on the canvas. A tribute to the formal idiom of Pop Art in their vitality and clarity, they are also a unique reflection of the rich diversity of MARTIN’s oeuvre.

FLORIAN NÄHRER’s (b. St. Pölten, AT, 1976) serial paintings derive their fascination from arrays of richly colorful basic geo- metric shapes whose radiance and luminosity bring to mind Gothic church windows. A kind of optical illusion results from the perspectival distortion of the elements, which inspires a sense of spatial depth and encourages the beholder to immerse themselves in a colloquy with the works. Their contemplative energy is in no small part due to the fact that NÄHRER, who studied divinity as well as art, continually interweaves issues relevant to contemporary society with religion, philosophy, and mythology.

DANNI PANTEL’s (b. Erlangen, DE, 1989) colorful paintings captivate thanks to her playful, spontaneous-intuitive, and personal approach. The confrontational large-format canvases on which she lays out her generously spaced abstract forms and lines attest to the simultaneity of order and chaos. The latter reflects the artist’s inner moods, or as she puts it: “The canvas is my medium of choice, the platform on which I can lend visual reality to my sensations, experiences, and emotions.” The subject of “intention and accident” plays a crucial role in PANTEL’s art. Rather than pointing up the contrast between these two antithetical terms, she aims to transmit a nimble and yet poetic tension to the canvas that is open to interpretive elaboration by the beholder. 

VINCENT SZAREK (b. Westerly, RI, 1973) presents a series of new fiberglass and polyurethane sculptures and wall pieces. What sets the objects, which the artist glazes and polishes by hand, apart is that he incorporates aspects of mass production and themes from everyday life. They reflect his fascination with well-known design logos and symbols and the formal idiom of American popular culture. SZAREK gained his expertise in the fine points of painting and varnishing when he worked in an auto body shop while studying at the renowned Rhode Island School of Design and as an assistant to Jeff Koons and Peter Halley. 

CAMERON MARTIN

VINCENT SZAREK