455A Valencia street, SF, 5-8pm
afterward an abbreviated show of this
work can be viewed by appointment at
12 Elgin Park SF CA 94103
through March 18
Jürgen Trautwein presents his new suite of paintings in an eighth exhibition with 60SIX, “R u Sirius”. His practice of using found objects continues as in this series printed vellum maps of game animals and star constellations act as the canvas, both showing through and at times creating resistance with the acrylic paint. Jürgen has an uncanny ability to seemingly effortlessly integrate elements of subjects or materials he confronts in daily life into his paintings.
In these paintings the artist’s brush marks subtly or boldly disintegrate and deconstruct. In some pieces the marks from the maps below show through the paint as a curious pattern or code. Trautwein’s deliberate manner allows his color fields and wide brush gestures to interact with the found object substrate and create an unlabored aesthetic, not precious, nor overly worked. The artist says about his paintings, “They are voids of no incident encouraging a state of contemplative meditation in the viewer.
The name of the series married with the outer space maps suggest the absurdity and inevitably of our precarious current relationship with the larger universe and the microscopic world. This angst resides just beneath the surface in our lives and below the artist’s confident gesture.
