Monotypes and Paintings
September 23 to November 25, 2012
Austrian Artist Herbert Brandl (b. 1959) lives and works in Vienna. Since 2004 he teaches painting at the Academy of Visual Art in Dusseldorf, Germany, and his paintings are part of ALTANA Collection, which assembles contemporary artworks in the curatorial frame of "nature".
In Brandl's works, nature appears in a variety of ways - not as an illustration of landscape but as a mutual permeation of art and nature. In Brandl's body of work, the motif is created in the eye of the beholder and ranges from mountain panoramas, forests, meadows, and valleys up to bright-lighting, abstract spaces of colour and shapes. His works thus claim their own nature, which is not necessarily dependent on outer impressions, which is to be sensibly tangible in his paintings and monotypes. Herbert Brandl creates his paintings in one continuous dynamic act of painting which mirrors itself in the work's direct power of expression.
The technique of monotype allows the artist to transfer the immediacy of his paintings into the field of printmaking. A selection of his recent series and single drawings, which were largely created for this exhibition, reveal how uncompromising Brandl's both intuitive as well as process-oriented analytical approach remains. The acrylic board Brandl uses since 2009 can always only deliver one single print. In that regard, monotype becomes kind of an indirect act of painting which Brandl knows to use with the techniques of print. Brandl's works bear similarities to Asian Indian ink drawings, adopt Asian influences with regards to technique and composition and exemplify in this presentation of his work his long term engagement in Japan.
This exhibition presents for the first time Herbert Brandl's paintings and monotypes together which reveals fascinating relations between his paintings and his prints.
An exhibition of ALTANA Cultural Foundation in cooperation with Kunsthalle Emden.
