Dirk Skreber
Untitled
1999 Oil, tape and foam rubber on Canvas
180 x 200cm |
Dirk
Skreber's Untitled offers an eerie sense of stillness, his
monumental locomotive frozen in a moment of detached anticipation.
It's not the actual subject that Skreber portrays but the
haunting quality of it. He savours the illusion and contradiction
of technique. Merging collaged elements of foil tape and foam
rubber into the painterly surface, Skreber creates a tension
between the abstract and representational. The dented steel
of the train, the impenetrable gradient of the sky and uncertainty
of the dusty ground belie their artificial construction, each
generating an austere, intangible quality. Sublime in their
unreality, they culminate in an apprehensive tension where
anything (or nothing) might happen. |