The Michael Janssen Gallery in Cologne is looking forward to hosting the first solo show featuring works by Christof Mascher.The exhibition will include small-scale works on paper and paintings in oil and Indian ink on wood.
In Mascher's paintings, ethnic elements are fused with a utopian notion of architecture in the tradition of the Gläserne Kette (The Glass Chain),a chain letter created by an Expressionist group of architects which was initiated by Bruno Taut and Wenzel Hablik at the beginning of the 20th century. Dark, fantastical mountain landscapes are populated by crystalline arches,witches' cottages and grotesque figures, yet nevertheless appear profoundly inanimate. The emphatic simplicity of both painting techniques and image conceptions invites comparisons with Neil Jenney's bad painting and an intuitive artistic flow as in Per Kirkeby's work on masonite from the early 1970's. Although Mascher is not concerned with accuracy of perspective and lifelike reproduction, the painstakingly varnished surfaces of some works woo the onlooker with the resplendent lustre of old Master paintings.
Christof Mascher (born 1979) who is attending Walter Dahn's class at the Academy of Art in Braunschweig (Brunswick), participated in a group exhibition at the Michael Janssen Gallery Cologne in the summer of 2006. His works are due to be exhibited at the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal next year.
