COLOGNE.- Thomas Rehbein Galerie is presenting four internationally acclaimed artistic positions in contemporary painting. In the digital age, painting disperses into a variety of media, becoming a vague metaphor. Approaches by Gerard Hemsworth (GB), David Reed (USA), Olav Christopher Jenssen (N), and Peter Tollens (D), however, reveal a determined conversion to the manual reality of painting: applying colour to create a surface. Aiming to seek out new artistic forms of expression, the act of painting is performed on the basis of current discourses on painting that question this traditional medium in the context of new image making techniques. Common to all four positions is the reflection on painting during which different aspects and approaches take shape.

PETER TOLLENS examines the relationship of colour and pictorial ground, using the canvas’s depth to counterbalance a flat surface and enhance the painting’s spatial expansion. First applying an undercoat consisting of egg tempera, the artist then adds layers of oil-paint in short, prominent brush strokes, bestowing the painting’s surface with rhythm until the top layer finally exudes a monochrome colour effect. In places, colour compositions break through the surface while the paint’s earthy, chapped consistency adds a dynamic structure. All decisions regarding painting are immediate outcomes of a thorough self-observation: “Doing and reacting. Creating and destroying.” (Tollens)

GERARD HEMSWORTH’s scenarios are set on smooth monochrome backgrounds. Painterly gestures consisting of spontaneous, personal impulses give way to a controlled contour and precisely arranged colour fields, producing figures and objects of extremely schematic representations that bear resemblance to comics or pictographs. A cactus appears next to horizontally and vertically stacked beams and parallel lines, its dotted silhouette presenting cylindrical sprouts standing to attention. Through their template-like, impersonal painterly treatment, all elements residing within the image plane attune to extreme homogeneity. There is no hierarchical perspective; everything is captured uniformly and appears flat, resulting in an all-over effect on a near textual level, not in line with the gestural verve seen in Abstract Expressionism. Instead of asserting the non-representational as an essential feature of abstraction, Hemsworth uses figuration to make abstraction legible, inserting subjects comprised of interchangeable characters, their meaning established in ever-new interpretative connections.

OLAV CHRISTOPHER JENSSEN describes the way in which he works as follows: “My principle is to not correct myself.” In his mainly colourful works, the artist combines different styles and forms of painting, all the while remaining open to a dynamic act of painting. Spontaneity and regularity alternate, occasionally resulting in contrasting forms of expression as moulding movement and playful verve dominate the artist’s brushstrokes. The freedom of letting anything happen and leaving traces while doing so, allows various elements to occur simultaneously: block-like colour fields, ornamental figures, staccato-type scribblings, colour streaks, strict geometric and seemingly vegetal shapes, even letters appear in his paintings. Through overlays, smudging, and hints of figuration the viewer may follow a track ultimately leading him back into the turmoil of this painterly cosmos.

DAVID REED’s subject range consists of painterly components specific to the medium. One of these “medial attributes”, the brushstroke, is frequently cited and varied by the artist, sometimes by smoothly applying a layer of glaze, sometimes by wielding a paintbrush saturated with paint. Like baroque draperies exposing physicality by the way in which they fall, Reed’s skilful handling of the brush creates an illusory world. Instead of venturing into the alternative reality of illusionism, Reed broaches the issue of pictorial means that enable such deception, allowing painterly effects to develop into independent subjects. In an almost baroque style the painted figure appears voluminous and glazed in colour, lavishly filling the canvas and claiming its existence as a pictorial embodiment of painting itself.