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PETER SCHMERSAL
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PETER SCHMERSAL
27 February - 4 April 2015
82 Kingsland RoadLondon E2 8DP
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CONFIGURATIONS OF DESIRE
Image forms a structure for the paint, trans-figured via intuition and instinct. The ‘subject’ is painting, the subject is the artist, the subject is paint. What is the attraction of Peter Schmersal’s paintings?
Yves-Alain Bois suggests that visual pleasure lies in the illusory spaces of the figure/ground relationship. For Bois, this pleasure is a frivolity to be avoided. But why morally deny the pleasures of the paint regardless of specific context and content? Perhaps we should ask how is this visual pleasure constituted, how does it function and what does it do? Is it purely visual? It may be necessary to read closely.
The deep grey-green-yellow painterly marks of Goya’s La Duquesa de Alba y su Duena are transcribed in Schmersal’s Die Herzogin von Alba und “La Beata” / nach Goya and transfigured into shocking luminous magenta horizontal lines. The pigment’s constituent shades emerge from the various thicknesses – from blackened pink at dense edges of brush marks, through vivid fuschia mid tones into bright pale violet transparency of thin peripheries onto slightly dirty, yellowed white. The magenta descends behind two figures over a halo-like negative shadow cast as white light behind and beneath them. The theatrical backdrop functions as a prop-like, contingent suggestion of pictorial space. The women are an aggregate of loose, wet, narrower strokes; swirling lines of fatty paint in rose, peach, pale blue, lilac, ochre, lemon, violet, cream and white flounces punctuated with black. They create pictorial tension against the ground-surface, opposing the monotone translucent striped marks with an opaquely heavy, complex knot of fleshiness.
Peter Schmersal’s paintings are constructed from forms, conventions and, often, actual works from the history of painting – portraits, self- portraits, still lives, landscapes, figures, tableaux and recurring motifs like flowers, legs without bodies, tables, beds (or rather, the same table and bed reiterated, differently). These images function as the overt content of the painting while structuring and mediating his visceral, material and libidinal responses to them. Intuition and instinct are neurobiological processes that analyse neurological and sensual bodily data, recognizing patterns in order to interpret the world. Schmersal’s channeling of this information via forms that are recognizable and familiar models a reflexive set of responses that are both visual and physical.
The figure/ground relationship is an integral part of Schmersal’s work, structuring the paintings. Although he works with a flattened pictorial space – the painted ‘background’ sits on the surface - the viewer is made aware of the paint’s materiality. The marks are both physical and flatly decorative; illusory depth dissolves into the concrete depth of paint strokes. However the figure/ground interplay is not the only source of visual pleasure.
Schmersal’s technicolour Goyas become even more cartoonish, more figures of paint than the originals; the bleakness of Goya’s colour is transformed and imbued with fleshy desire, in the pinks and purples of skin and bruises. There is a pleasure in the way the work appears to pulsate with the sheer joy of making, and a satisfaction in the material of the paint. There is pleasure also in the way in which the painting reinterprets a familiar image or form, in the meaty feedback loop running through these altered
repetitions, the constant reference to the painting and the painter. This returns overtly as representations of the artist in multiple self-portraits, or is more obliquely manifest in works like Mann im Spiegel, Waschbecken - where the outline of a white square on a white ground contains a small hexagonal shape; a loosely depicted washbasin, a figure in the hexagon, and purple and blue shadows pull the image into the pared down pictorial space of a man in a mirror on an extruded wall with a sink. The pale, minimal space resembles an artist’s studio. Other paintings repeat motifs of desks, desks with chairs, and beds that are reminiscent of studio furniture: equipment for work, thought and dreaming; intellectual and physical pleasures. Analogously, Schmersal gathers together optical and sensible data: gesture mediates vibrant and fleshy colour through the image and the sensuality of paint like bodily excretions.
Stephanie Moran, co-founder and curator of The Marmite Prize for Painting
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Mann in brandenburgischer Landschaft, 2013Oil on canvas200 x 130 cm78 3/4 x 51 1/8 in
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Mann mit Seil, 2011Oil on canvas200 x 100 cm78 3/4 x 39 3/8 in
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Grossmeister Alof de Wignacourt und sein Page, nach Caravaggio, 2011Oil on canvas80 x 60 cm31 1/2 x 23 5/8 in
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Ich / Papst Sixtus, 2014Oil on canvas180 x 115 cm70 7/8 x 45 1/4 in
Ich, 2014Oil on canvas115 x 85 cm45 1/4 x 33 1/2 in
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nach Ingres, 2013Oil on canvas115 x 95 cm45 1/4 x 37 3/8 in
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Pferd mit Reiter, nach Philips Wouwermann, 2009Oil on canvas70 x 60 cm27 1/2 x 23 5/8 in
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"La Beata" und... / nach Goya, 2009Oil on canvas80 x 60 cm31 1/2 x 23 5/8 in
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Herbst oder die Traubernte / nach Goya, 2009Oil on canvas100 x 70 cm39 3/8 x 27 1/2 in
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Fontäne, 2014Oil on canvas32 x 25 cm12 5/8 x 9 7/8 in
Rotbuche, 2014Oil on canvas80 x 60 cm31 1/2 x 23 5/8 in
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Glasschale, Kirschen / Tisch, Kirschen, 2014Oil on canvas200 x 100 cm78 3/4 x 39 3/8 in
Page 29Knieender Mann, vielleicht betend, 2013Oil on canvas200 x 140 cm78 3/4 x 55 1/8 in
Page 28Knieender Mann, Seil ziehend, 2013Oil on canvas180 x 105 cm70 7/8 x 41 3/8 in
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Frau, 2013Oil on canvas115 x 100 cm45 1/4 x 39 3/8 in
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Mann mit Buch und Hammer, 2011Oil on canvas200 x 100 cm78 3/4 x 39 3/8 in
Trauben, Tisch, 2011Oil on canvas120 x 100 cm47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in
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Die Herzogin von Alba und "La Beata" / nach Goya, 2009Oil on canvas60 x 45 cm23 5/8 x 17 3/4 in
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Bett, 2009Oil on canvas115 x 95 cm45 1/4 x 37 3/8 in
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Dead Flowers, 2010Oil on canvas200 x 140 cm78 3/4 x 55 1/8 in
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Mann im Spiegel, Waschbecken, 2014Oil on canvas200 x 150 cm78 3/4 x 59 1/8 in
Bildnis eines Jünglings, nach Gottlieb Schick, 2009Oil On Canvas100 x 70 cm39 3/8 x 27 1/2 in
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Ich, 2013Oil on canvas200 x 150 cm78 3/4 x 59 1/8 in
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Kirschzweige, 2013Oil on canvas200 x 120 cm78 3/4 x 47 1/4 in
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Mann mit Blumen, 2014Oil on canvas200 x 110 cm78 3/4 x 43 1/4 in
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ABOUT PETER SCHMERSAL
Born in Wuppertal, Germany, Peter Schmersal currently lives and works in Berlin. Past solo exhibitions have included Kunstmuseum Solingen, Solingen; Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal; Goethe-Institut, Paris; Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne and Paris; Angles Gallery, Los Angeles and Edward Thorp Gallery, New York. His work has also featured in exhibitions at Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden; Museum Baden, Solingen; National M. K. Ciurlionis Art Museum, Kaunas and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. His work is in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection; Museum Frieder Burda and the Von der Heydt Museum, and numerous private collections. Peter Schmersal is now represented by Flowers Gallery.
The exhibition is accompanied by the 160 page full colour monograph Malerei, published by Hatje Cantz.
82 Kingsland RoadLondon E2 8DP+44 (0)20 7920 7777
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