Matthias Dornfeld

Oh My Goodness
April 25 - May 24, 2008
Opening Reception Friday April 25 6-9pm

“Failure is an important point for me, because I’ve had the experience  (not always, but very often) that without failure at some point of the working process, I cannot make a good painting.”
-Matthias Dornfeld

Born in 1960 in Esslingen, Germany and based out of Berlin, Matthias Dornfeld studied at the Art Academy in Munich. His work has appeared at galleries and institutions including Ben Kaufmann, Maschenmode, Foreverandadaybuero and Gmür in Berlin; Rowley Kennerk in Chicago, Gio Marconi in Milan, Harris Liebermann and Rental Gallery In New York . LaBoum III in Warsaw, Sies und Höke in Duesseldorf, Lothringer13 in Munich and Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna. This is the artist’s first exhibition with Blanket and will consist of 16 works on paper and two on canvas.

Dornfeld’s paintings start simply enough, with subject matter which initially might seem anti-climactic in its ordinariness: portraits, amphorae, landscapes and the like. The palette is hot with deluxe colour; combined with the recurring use of simplified forms, this suggests to the viewer a folk ethic, a kind of primitivism, but there is more at work here. Far from being static, Dornfeld’s paintings resonate with a frenetic energy, as elements of process and experience erupt in conflict and then strive for resolution—or not, as the case may be.

In one work, a red nude with glowing (and near-symmetrical) eyes and breasts stares out from the picture ground. The nude’s hair is suggested by both a blocky halo of yellow and white and multicolored clusters of supple curlicue lines. The figure is pushed out from (or pulled into?) the picture ground by a crude proscenium arch in cerulean blue, yet this, in turn, is layered (or under painted) with more scrabbly lines and sheer plates of colour. We are invited to welcome this figure as a standard nude portrait, given the presence of certain “typical” accoutrements of seduction (prominent breasts and eyes, cascading hair, the inescapable dominance of the Otto Dix red.) Yet the viewer is pushed and pulled between layers, conflicting and yet beguilingly symbiotic. In another of Dornfeld’s works, a figure clad in a parti-colored cloak and high orange hat confronts us with all the vigilant gravity of one of Rembrandt’s Old Masters. Again, the figure emerges from/disappears into a kind of proscenium, this one made up of two large, billowing chartreuse folds, floating against a gaping abyss which works inwards from violet to indigo to black. It is not only the addition of these spatial features which distracts us from the subject of the picture; it is also the surface complexity of the paint, the thick, exuberant strokes, the feverish scratchiness which merely suggests the existence of facial features. The viewer is seemingly denied any kind of absoluteness or resolution in Dornfeld’s pictures; we are besieged on all sides by contradictions born not merely of the artist’s process but of life itself. The atmosphere swirls with sketchy first ideas, visions, afterthoughts, optimism, disappointments and nostalgia. Visual or thematic resolution is neither a guarantee, nor a prerequisite here. Whatever confusion the viewer experiences in looking at these pictures, the pleasure is immediate and undeniable.