↳ Exhibitions

Tristan Wilczek at Markus Lüttgen

May 24, 2017

Artist: Tristan Wilczek

Venue: Markus Lüttgen, Cologne, Germany

Date: April 24 – June 2, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Markus Lüttgen, Cologne

Markus Lüttgen is delighted to announce the first solo show of Tristan Wilczek (b. 1989) for Art Cologne.

Tristan Wilczek’s works examine the process of painting as a reflection centered on the idea of painting. Colour, form and inscription pervade each other while constantly creating new compositions of reduced space that change between abstraction and representation. Wilczek’s paintings present themselves as certain moments of information that reveal their subject matters only within the limits of a scheme conceived by a system conceived by the mind.

For Wilczek, this pictorial assumption is based on a process of substitution of form and colour through their linguistic transcription. Abbreviations, words and numbers inherit the potential of layered references that become independent within the forms of diagrams.

Aware of their linguistic status as visual relict, the large formats remain endemic while referencing the grammatical levels of meaning within concrete poetry. The immanent sets of definitions and terms seem only to apply within the solidity of Wilczek’s pictorial cosmos and refuse any direct definition of our perception. Similar to this constant sounding of the pictorial composition, the paintings visualize a constant investigation of the realms of verbalization that shifts between opacity and transparency.

Like the abbreviations and linguistic relicts, the pictorial spaces in Wilczek’s works are characterized by a fragility that is subject to constant change. Light and floating areas of coloured pencil, airbrush or graphite are contrasting thick stains of oil paint and transfer the pictorial opposition not only into a balance of physique and psyche, but elude any two-dimensional references. Based on addition and subtraction, Wilczek’s paintings circle between injection and deduction of meaning. His work challenges us and points to the fact that everything that is part of the cognitive process is only comprehensible based on the level of accessible information. For Wilczek, seeing becomes a concept of power that is linked to a constant search for both, the created pictorial systems and their multiple layerings. Within this space nothing seems to be fixed or claiming universal validity. His works reveal themselves as mirrors of perceptions that can only touch the portrayed object with words.

-Philipp Fernandes do Brito

A catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition in German and English including an interview with the artist by Philipp Fernandes do Brito.