As an artist, Kristian Fenzl has been working with great verve on his graphic painting in recent years. In doing so, the multiple award-winning artist plays with the principle of repetition in a richly varied formulation, thus demonstrating his intensive exploration of a thematic field. He creates series that he repeatedly builds on, such as his landscape paintings "Landscapes" (since 2007) or the body landscape paintings "Paraiso" (since 2011).
He uses paints in different shades of color, which flow into one another in a free, gesturally sweeping act of painting, as in action painting, or are laid over one another in a multifaceted way as individually selected shades of color with brushes or spatulas. In his first paintings of the "Farbflash" series from 2023, he begins with a brushstroke that glides across the adjacent canvases in a broad painterly gesture or as an intricate loop, or spontaneously spreads across them. As he continues to work, he tries to create a variation of this stroke in a particular color. Serial pictures are created in an expressive painting process characterized by rhythmic colour dynamics with a strong ductus. He masters different ways of applying paint: light and heavy as well as airy and ground-heavy. The light often slips into the colors and intensifies their luminous radiance.
His paintings from the "Farbflash" series created for the "Flash" exhibition at the GALERIE-halle in Linz/Urfahr are a veritable riot of color in the truest sense of the word. Splashes of color merge in a passionately set style, marbled, shiny layers of paint cover the canvas. In his paintings, the artist uses the merging of the different colored paints to create a softly painted play of patterns. They owe their aura to the radiance of the Mediterranean sun, the silvery sheen of the ocean waves and the colorful ornaments of African landscapes, which Kristian Fenz! has often experienced on his travels to southern destinations.
How about the tempting assumption that the artist uses the impressionistic mood of the realities he has experienced in his paintings to bring joy and light into these dark times?
Dr Maria Reitter-Kollmann
art historian
Downloads:
