Fensterbilder, Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich, June 25 – September 17, 2016
With Fensterbilder, the gallery Andreas Binder presents the seventh solo exhibition of artist Matthias Meyer, in which works that are stylistically as well as thematically connected to earlier works are shown. While in his 2014 exhibition the element of water in all its natural forms of appearance was central, this prior motif yields to another transparent medium in Fensterbilder, viz. window glass.
Here as well, slices of reality form the base of an art that lets the actual motif disappear in its aesthetic and substantial ambiguity. The window glass, always mirroring the foreground and at the same time giving insight into what lies behind, becomes, on the canvas, the playground and projection screen for an artistic examination of the luminance of light.
At the same time, the light, which breaks on the canvas through permeable coats of paint, gives the beholder glimpses into a transcendental world that is saturated with emotions, luminosity, and color. In analogy to the psychoanalytic film theory, in which the cinema screen is seen as a window to the subconsciousness, the motif of the window becomes a mirror of subconscious art work and allows the observer access to dreamlike worlds.
This intuitive component, which is situated between a spiritual and psychologizing interpretation, is mirrored in the tangible artistic method of Matthias Meyer. Though the artist uses photography as a guideline for his paintings, the execution arises detached of this guide in an improvised, almost oneiric character. “It is a moment of risk“, Meyer confesses.“Actually, I build the picture abstract in reverse order, as soon as a detail becomes recognizable, I stop the process again.“
And still–in spite of Meyer’s rejection of the theoretical supersaturation of his art–his pictures cannot be viewed as free of any central questions of the art-theoretical discourse. The renunciation of figurative content as well as of geometrical abstraction and at the same time the admission of photographies of glass art as an aid to memory leads in practice into a principle of shapelessness, in which color is used autonomously. Thanks to this technical-conceptual approach, it seems that Matthias Meyer is succeeding in overcoming the antagonism between figuration and abstraction.
In playing with the different genres of architecture, art of glass, photography, and painting, Matthias Meyer returns to an almost spiritual impetus, in which the artisanal and artistic bundling of light enables the display of a further reality in a two-dimensional medium by means of the use of color – just as in the sacred glass painting – in a spontaneous, artistic act.
Opening: June 24th 2016 from 6 pm
ART WEEKEND: June 25th & 26th | Saturday and Sunday | 11 am – 6 pm
OPEN ART: September 11th – ,13th, 2016
Exhibition: June 25th – September 17th 2016