60SIX presents the eleventh exhibition of Jürgen Trautwein’s paintings in a series called "Shy Tidings".
The small object-like paintings on cardboard packing material feel like artifacts excavated from buried hidden places. They are modern painting “Trautwein style”...utilizing a substrate of detritus from twenty first century lifestyles, then transformed by the artist’s additive and subtractive process of layering paint in planned accidents. The result is a suite of paintings with luxurious texture, mystery, surface tension and contours we don’t expect to see.
Some works show the wall through the piece, so the negative space behind is vibrating with the painted material. There are no illusions of depth with this kind of painting, it’s just what’s there. Other pieces use tighter weaves almost like fabric. Some look more sculptural where outer frayed edges or animated shapes emerge. Trautwein’s paintings are enhanced by a limited palette, sometimes just black so nothing becomes too worked, forced or complicated. They just breathe and do not demand much other than the viewer’s contemplation.
In Trautwein’s words this work is part of an ongoing exploration of conceptual and post-minimalist painting, much rooted in the process of the now, guided only by the use of the materials and their momentary transformations. These are paintings of transience, impermanence and imperfection. In search for a title, "Shy Tidings" came in a dream.
