About the work

MATTHIAS WEISCHER

ABOUT THE WORK

Raum Nr. 1, 2000
Room No. 1
Oil on canvas
200 x 250 cm

Matthias Weischer employs a figurative style. The cube-like wooden structure dominating the painting is immediately recognisable. It resembles a wooden structure primarily because of the shading that Weischer utilises to give it a spatial dimension. The realistic effect of depth, however, is offset by a number of small bands of colour incorporated into the structure. Their uniform flatness and lack of connection with the other elements of the subject imbue the picture with a surreal and uncanny character.

The structure is placed on a green podium which on closer inspection appears to be dissolving. The solid character of the podium turns out to be an illusion. Its contours are blurred and the green fades into a bluish nuance creating associations to the liquid elements of air and water.

PLAYING WITH SHAPES AND COLOURS
A key theme in Raum Nr. 1 is the relationship between surface and space. In the painting Weischer explores what happens when two surfaces collide, in that the perspectives overlap, or when an exactly depicted object such as a wooden structure is juxtaposed with an abstract and indefinable background. On this clash of figuration and abstraction Weischer says: “At first, I think abstractly in the sense of composition, form and colour, and then I play around. If I think then about how to continue, rather figurative images appear in my mind. Now, I usually over-paint the picture frequently, and set something new on the canvas. The more I move in this way, the more my idea takes concrete form.”

About Weischer’s art in general
Matthias Weischer belongs to a young generation of painters who graduated from the Academy in Leipzig and who in recent years have attained great recognition on the international art scene. All of them take their point of departure in figurative painting, adding to it new elements and inspirations with great technical flair.

Weischer’s painting takes the form of an exploration of space. The majority of his works depict architectural structures and dilapidated, abandoned interiors. They portray concrete and immediately recognisable spaces. At the same time they explore painting’s abstract principles of composition in the form of e.g. pure surfaces of colour and ornamental pattern formations. Weischer’s paintings combine realistic details such as tattered pieces of wallpaper, worn down furniture and ornamental surface structures on parquet flooring with a number of abstract form experiments. In this manner they shatter the illusion that the actual space is merely transferred to the painting’s canvas.

CONCRETE AND IMAGINARY SPACES
Weischer creates collisions between an immediately recognisable space and a number of abstract form elements and expanses of colour. Thus he calls attention to the fact that the space of the painting is not only a rendering of an actual, physical space. It may also function as a projection of a different virtual or imaginary space; that is a space which questions our usual perception of space and which activates us as viewers by jogging our memories, imaginations and personal outlooks.