Tilo Baumgärtel

TILO BAUMGÄRTEL

ACID REIGN

Based on distinct East German landscapes, Tilo Baumgärtel creates a series of unsettling scenes occupying the border between realism and surrealism.

Hydroplan, 2002

Description
A deserted forest scene with a lake is bathed in an indefinable dusky light. Along the edge of the lake are a group of fast little boats and hydroplanes, all of them abandoned. The foliage tells us it is summer but the violet and toxic green colours are unnatural.

The painting is executed in a realistic style but some elements break with that realism. The house in the right-hand side of the painting is in the water; either flooded or placed there by a whimsical artist. The picture’s colour scheme is dominated by subdued browns, interrupted by aggressive neon colours.

About the work
Something is amiss. But what exactly renders this seemingly idyllic landscape unsettling, is hard to say. The German artist Tilo Baumgärtel has created an evocative landscape, both familiar and strange.
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About Baumgärtel's in general
Tilo Baumgärtel moves in the area between dream, nightmare and reality. The surreal subject: the deserted forest lake in Hydroplane or the abandoned and overgrown bus stops in Period of Waiting, slowly appears when the apparently naturalist paintings are scrutinised.
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Literature
"Tilo Baumgärtel. Hydroplan", Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, 2003