Klemens Gasser “Seascapes”
Tanja Grunert Gallery
[Image: Klemens Gasser "Nouchie in the sky (Trindade Petrel)" (2018) oil, plants and dirt on canvas, 98 x 80 in.]
This event has ended.
Tanja Grunert presents Seascapes: an exhibition of a new series of paintings and a video installation by Klemens Gasser.
Recent paintings including seascapes, seabirds in flight, and several pieces from the artist’s ethereal Whip Paintings series come together in an organic expression of the artist’s philosophy of motion and action, longing and desire.
The title of the show, Seascapes, refers to several large and medium-scale paintings and a video installation. There is a forward-looking longing in the pieces, which are based on images and impressions viewed from a great physical distance.
In the video installation the horizon of the ocean is viewed as a chaotic roiling line through the eye of a spotting scope which films at 70 times magnification. This desire to travel great distances becomes both a bubbling emotional desire to see into the future and the wish to transverse physical space in seek of something unseen and longed for on the other side of the shimmering horizon.
Nature takes a great part in the inspiration, creation, and evolution of all of Klemens Gasser’s works. Both the Seascapes and Trindade Petrels in flight are painted without brush, but are applied by hand in a repetitive slapping motion. The richly textured paintings are done in a combination of oil paint and body latex; such as would be used for creating latex fetish-wear directly on the skin.
The slapping motions of Klemens Gasser’s paintings echo his Whip Paintings, minimalist works which record traces of the violence used to create them. While unable to record the force of wing beats, the crashing of waves, or the crack of the whip breaking the sound barrier, Klemens Gasser focuses on the traces and impressions left by highly symbolic elements representing motion/emotion, creation/evolution/decay, emotional/physical longing.
Whip Painting Process Video
Imprints of energy become records of time—the past and the future, both equally traceless in the flight of a bird, the crash of the surf, or the arch of a whip. A hand slapping paint on a canvas can be a wing beat that allows the body to soar across space, surf a wave to a physical destination or emotional high, or follow the lash of the whip to a lover’s body.
Each piece is unique yet intertwined, created and left to evolve in Klemens Gasser’s plein air studio in Brooklyn. The whole tells a story in which each piece is an actor, and without interaction and conversation is not whole.
Anouche Wise
Media
Schedule
from June 08, 2018 to July 13, 2018
Opening Reception on 2018-06-08 from 18:00 to 20:00