Guenter A. Werner, Works 1998 - 2005
September 8th – October 15th, 2005
Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to announce German artist, Guenter A. Werner’s first solo exhibition in New York. While Guenter A. Werner’s work may appear to be sculptural he considers himself to be a painter. Expanding upon the theoretical considerations of Modernist painters such as Mondrian, who rejected the tradition of illusionistic perspectival painting, Werner creates his own autonomous forms of expression. Instead of using the canvas as the paint-support Werner opts for more tactile materials such as plaster and more recently various vessels, such as plates, bowls, paint cans and buckets. These vessels are filled with slick, candy-colored pools of Polyurethane, creating visually arresting painterly sculptures that either hang on the wall or rest on the floor.
In Transport, 2003-4, Werner expands upon this, incorporating a 12 foot boat, into which he pours several gallons of electric yellow pigment. By employing these means, Werner successfully integrates objects as “paint carriers,” which in turn become vehicles for transporting iconographic and poetic content relevant to the viewer’s cultural and geo-political perspective.
Also included in this body of work is a series of luminescent epoxy-filled plates and platters that work autonomously or in groups as colorful installations. In the F.I.T. series, Werner hangs buckets filled with different colored paint from several large monochrome canvases. In the bandage series, Werner combines paint jars with silicone filled tin cans, creating bright tightly knit clusters.
“Just as the monochrome surface of a single pixel is an abstract image and is engaged in the complex visual projection of an idea, which changes with the degree of our focus; so the monochrome surfaces that Guenter A. Werner pours in glowing colors into plates, bowls, paint cans, and buckets, are painterly sites that trigger multiple formal and conceptual connotations.” – Gottfried Haffeman.
Guenter A. Werner has exhibited widely in Germany, Austria and Poland. This is his debut show in New York. He is represented in Europe by Gallerie Hafeman in Weisbaden, Germany and lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany.