Erik Schmidt "As above is so below"
Elizabeth Dee
This event has ended.
Elizabeth Dee Gallery presents the New York solo debut of Berlin-based artist Erik Schmidt. The exhibition will include a series of new paintings and a video work.
Marked by a particularly plastic and muscular approach to painting, Schmidt’s work maintains a complex and, at times, contrary relationship with its subject matter. His unconventional and distinct painting style exploits thick brushwork and heightened impasto in the creation of surfaces that command attention to the materiality of paint as much as to the scenes and scenarios depicted. However, that is not to say that the topics of Schmidt’s paintings are incidental. Each body of work is predicated on the artist’s immersion in a particular social rite or location—the hunting rituals of the German aristocracy in a body of work from 2006 and the arid, haunting landscape of the Ella Valley situated between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in this most recent work—that carry specific connotations and codes for the viewer who deciphers its identity. Yet in his treatment of these subjects, Schmidt‘s working of the canvas surface and handling of color creates an extraordinary tension between form and content, representation and abstraction.
Media
Schedule
from November 29, 2008 to January 10, 2009
Opening Reception on 2008-11-29 from 18:00 to 20:00