SAATCHI GALLERY
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SELECTED WORKS BY Matthias Weischer



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Matthias Weischer

Egyptian Room

2001
Oil on Canvas

220 x 220cm

Matthias Weischer's dream houses defy all spatial logic; he makes architectural installations that can only exist in two dimensions. Depicting a ceiling-less apartment, Egyptian Room removes the ambit between internal and external space. Instead, each element imposes its own sense of order on each other: outside, palm trees and sand dunes tower in geometric precision, while inside Matthias Weischer's meticulous grid gives way to its own organic confusion. The floor melds inconspicuously with the counter, shelves and table tops tilt to high-seas angles, and objects such as the basket sink below their supporting surfaces. Banality is ruminated as a perpetual labyrinth where obsession and madness become the pursuit of wonder and delight.


Matthias Weischer

House

2003
Oil on Canvas

180 x 240cm

House operates as an antilogy: a painting that's a contradiction of its own expression. Subverting the expected qualities of painterly rendition, Matthias Weischer invents an environment where each element adopts attributes opposite to their character. Flowers in the foreground recede with the flatness of wallpaper, while rugged mountain backdrops protrude with stylised sharpness. Hard-edged formalist tower blocks exceed planate limitation to create believable sculptural volume, while details nearest in perspective float in non-descriptive nether-space. Smudges and drips of pure abstract gesture should lead the eye directly back to the painting's surface; instead they create a disorienting tiered perspective. Matthias Weischer creates a common urban scene as a surprise of improbable construction, exploiting illusion to its ultimate possibility.


Matthias Weischer

Living Room

2003
Oil on Canvas

170 x 190cm

Matthias Weischer's paintings of interiors expose the architecture of painterly illusion. His rich surfaces contrast geometric fields of hard-edged abstraction with highly rendered decorative details to create an eerie play between flatness and 3D. Starting with a design of an empty room, Matthias Weischer builds his imagined locations layer upon layer, each added element further pushing the boundaries of perceived space. Incongruous perspectives, dizzying patterns and Escher-like visual riddles quietly allude to a sense of the uncanny. In Living Room, suburban normality is infiltrated by an almost unnoticeable surrealism: shrubbery on the inside of the building, an impossibly flat piano and a table that casts no shadow.


Matthias Weischer

Untitled 11

2003
Oil on Canvas

150 x 300cm

Matthias Weischer's composite paintings readily portray space as a surreal concept. In Untitled 11, Weischer creates a scene of diametric character: a grotty alley is given the smooth lighting and design effects of an institutional interior. Viewed over a railing, his set shuffles in and out of optical perspective. Shifting between representation and abstraction, breeze blocks repeat in Op Art patterns; a wall mural is a self-contained painting within a painting. A large white tower cuts through the canvas, a haywire scribble of spatial relief. Matthias Weischer off-sets this hard-edged style with his organic treatment of the ground: thin layers of oil paint ripple with the translucence of water. Plants and bricks suggest submersion, while the realistically rendered blankets float strangely on the surface.


Matthias Weischer

Untitled

2002
Oil on Canvas

102 x 120cm

In Matthias Weischer's Untitled, the artist constructs a claustrophobic room with fraudulent perspective. The airy turquoise space is squashed between the heavy mauve planes of ceiling and floor; only a too-tall standing lamp keeps them prised apart. The precariousness of the scene is repeated throughout: a dwarfed table teeters on matchstick legs under the weight of a classical urn and striped sticks appear to stand on end, placed at deceptive angles to the ground. Matthias Weischer emphasises the ‘askance' effect through the patterning of the carpets, tablecloth and wall hanging, each appearing out of turn in their layered spatial order.


Matthias Weischer

Familie 0-Mittag

2001
Oil on Canvas

190 x 240cm

Matthias Weischer's paintings explicitly show the falsification of their illusion. In Familie O-Mittag, Weischer doesn't create a room, but rather a complex system of intersecting rectangles. Here, the floor, window, wall and hearth exist as separate planes: the representative scene functions as a coincidence of their proximity. This geometric breakdown is extrapolated further in the bricks, tiles, picture frames and plant pots, dissolving the image of a room into an obsessive hallucination.


Matthias Weischer

Interior

2003
Oil on Canvas

75 x 96cm

Matthias Weischer's Interior sets up an ambience of corroded decadence. Here Weischer's formalist interests are presented with more naturalistic qualities. Exploiting his media to its full potential, Weischer creates spatial illusion through his application as well as composition: the heavy folds of the curtain are painted with concrete ballast, while the ceiling writhes with liquid fragility. Weischer renders the receding wall with battered texture, the illusion of movement gives way to a fanciful mural; a portal to a mystical landscape, incongruous with this dilapidated setting.



ARTIST INFORMATION




Matthias Weischer's BIOGRAPHY






1973
Born in Rheine
Lives and works in Leipzig

1995-2001
Studied painting at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst,
Leipzig

2000-2003
Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig MA

2001-2002
Junge Kunst in Essen scholarship at Kunsthaus Essen


SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS


2004
Simultan Künstlerhaus Bremen

2003
Galerie LIGA, Berlin
Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London

2002
Räumen Kunsthaus Essen

2001
Galerie Kleindienst, Leipzig
Antrittsausstellung Kabinett der Galerie im Kunsthaus Essen


SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS


2005
The experience of art Venice
Biennale
Prague Biennale
artists from Leipzig ARARIO, Chungnam, Korea
From Leipzig Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait Galerie EIGEN + ART, Berlin
DAVID, MATTHES und ich Kunstverein Nürnberg
DAVID, MATTHES und ich Kunstverein Bielefeld

2004
Northern Light: Leipzig in Miami Rubell
Family Collection, Miami
CLARA-PARK Positions of Contemporary Painting from Leipzig Marianne
Boesky Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, New York
Kunsthalle Mannheim

2003
Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen
Willkommen in Leipzig Museum für Bildende Kunst, Leipzig;
Liga, Berlin

2002
6 aus 11 Liga, Berlin
Leipziger Lerchen Kunstverein Speyer
Junge Malerei Kunstverein Sulzfeld
Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig

2001

Szenenwechsel XX Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt

at home Kunstverein Lindau
2000 Junge Kunst V Galerie Kleindienst, Leipzig
lokal Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig
Liga, Steibs Hof, Leipzig (G)
Junge Leipziger Maler Binz&Krämer, Cologne
Antrittsausstellung Kabinet der Galerie im Kunsthaus,
Essen;
Die Volontaire Rothamel, Erfurt
Leipzigel Mailer Markt Bruckmühl, Bruckmühl

 
 

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