Artist: Timur Lukas
Exhibition title: Der Wald vor Omas Fenster
Venue: NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany
Date: March 15 – May 31, 2020
Photography: Simon Vogel / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
“Timur Lukas’ painting, although it is up to something, is fast and surprising, full of spontaneous settlements and unorthodox pictorial inventions” – Matthias Dornfeld
NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein is pleased to present Der Wald vor Omas Fenster, the first institutional solo exhibition of the artist Timur Lukas.
In his series of large-format paintings, Timur Lukas depicts the impression of nature in days gone by. The artist’s own childhood memories – as the exhibition title suggests, fed by visits to his grandmother – are reduced to a few strong image fragments: windows, stairs, vases, trees. This subjectively shaped and ergo temporally and pictorially distorted recollection takes place on the canvas as the quintessence of these relics. As a result, sizes and shapes vary, but it is precisely from this that fiction is created as a clear certainty that is remembered as best as possible. The category of real and false memories as well as their emotional meaning, can only be adumbrated by the viewers of Lukas’ works.
Lukas’ works radiate in a variety of colors, positively charged, at times intoxicatingly exaggerated nature, brought to the canvas with a loose brushstroke in oil and spray paint, which yet can be named in detail, even if not to be misunderstood as documentary: Yarrow, Craspedia and poppy. As in earlier works, Timur Lukas continues to allow each color its own surface area, but the layers are staggered, the overpaintings are layered, notwithstanding the figuration executed becomes more clearly legible. A feverish dream of memory.
Lukas transfers the autobiographically influenced impressions into the actual exhibition space of the Kunstverein in the form of white lacquered vases made of plaster, freely modeled in their proportions, as well as an exhibition display. The fragile structures carry dried flower arrangements, the display doubles as a presentation surface and natural reminiscence.
Memory is not a fixed, complete representation of an event, but rather a fragmentary composite image. Formable, especially in the moment of remembering, a universal thought, equally familiar to the viewer and the artist. Painting as a window, less view than insight, always truth.
Timur Lukas was born in 1986 in Konstanz. He completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich as a master student of Prof. Gregor Hildebrandt. He lives and works in Munich.
