Künstlerhaus Bethanien shows Sven Drühl Falkenrot Prize Winner 2007

Tuesday, 04 December 2007 23:48

BERLIN, GERMANY - Sven Drühl’s artistic work lies in the field of conceptual painting. In a kind of remix or transformation, he re-interprets famous paintings from art history or contemporary art. As background to and patterns for his unconventional works, he chooses ‘classics’ ranging from Monet and Caspar David Friedrich to Ferdinand Hodler, even Eberhard Havekost. The paintings, which belong to the tradition of serial and Appropriation Art, focus on experimental painterly reproduction and simultaneously play with the idea of imitation in an ironic way.

Sven Drühl creates large-format diptychs, triptychs and paper works, as well as pieces using neon light. The diptychs and triptychs in particular take the theme of remixes further, being compositions assembled from fragments of the cited paintings. By combining elements from different works, the artist produces both a new form of landscape collage and copies of copies. The famous patterns are reproduced using contemporary techniques and thus quasi recreated. Drühl uses silicon to draw the outlines; oil paints and glossy varnishes give the paintings their typical cool ambience.

In recent and present works, Drühl abandons his use of the characteristic silicon paste. He combines paintings based on photographic patterns with hackneyed citations from art history, thus extending his consistently followed concept of serial appropriation by the inclusion of real photographs. A large number of monochrome, lacquered areas make the paintings seem almost computer-generated.

In his neon works, Drühl goes one step further: the outlines of the borrowed or converted pictorial motifs are realized in neon. These works concentrate on the silhouettes; the neon strips exude a mysterious glow, meaning that reminiscences of Romanticism and its landscape idyll are expressed once again – almost via the back door - in contemporary image reception. Sven Drühl was born in Nassau/Lahn in 1968 and lives and works in Berlin. He studied art and mathematics at the University GH in Essen from 1991-1996.

Sven Drühl has received fellowships from the Volkswagen Foundation Hanover and X. Rohkunstbau Berlin, and has taught at the University GH Essen, the Goethe University Frankfurt a.M. and the College of Fine Arts in Dresden.

To acknowledge the award of the “Falkenrot” Prize 2007 to Sven Drühl, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is showing a representative selection of the artist’s oeuvre to date, comprising several works from the black and the white series, colored works with and without silicon, and two large-format neon works.

The Falkenrot Prize for painting was initiated by the Dutch collectors Arie and Astrid de Knecht and is being presented for the third time in 2007. It is designated as an award for German and international artists whose work sets new standards in contemporary art. The prizewinners are selected by Arie and Astrid de Knecht in collaboration with a jury of experts. On exhibition 7-23 December, 2007.

The exhibition by Sven Drühl is a project organized by Künstlerhaus Bethanien. A catalogue is appearing parallel to the exhibition (editors: Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin) and will include a detailed interview with the artist (German/English) and many color illustrations.

Künstlerhaus Bethanien's history began well before its founding in 1974. In 1847, the building was inaugurated as the Central Deaconesses' Home and Hospital. Its architects were three of Karl Friedrich Schinkel's students, while its park location was designed by the equally famous landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné.

Visit : Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH at : www.bethanien.de/en/