Exhibition: 25 October – 19 December 2008; open Tue – Fri 12 – 5.30 pm and by appointment.
Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie are pleased to announce their collaboration with Andy Denzler (*1965 Zurich) on the occasion of his one-person show Short Cuts. The gallery represents Andy Denzler exclusively in Switzerland. In allusion to Robert Altman's film of the same title, Denzler presents snap shots from the parallel or loosely intertwined lives of fictive contemporary protagonists populating a plot of his own imagination.
The works in this show belong to the artist's Motion Painting series imitating the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image. Painted in oil and acrylic in a wet on wet technique, they focus on the restlessness and constant sense of movement defining present-day urban life. On show are a juxtaposition of large multi-figure canvases and close-up portraits.
Denzler's multi-figure canvases are a painterly distillation of street shootings taken by the artist. They offer a painter's view of what for instance Beat Streuli does in film and photography and bring to mind Peter Handke's silent stage productions with people walking or rushing across the scene in pursuit of some unknown to do. Denzler is a cautious colourist, preferring whites and greys, with occasional accents placed in earthy tones. The colour palette stems from a time when the artist did colour field painting. Concrete compositions now serve as architectural backdrops to these large works, replacing any indication of place or time.
The strangely sensual portraits, by contrast, enable a sudden focus on the individual and an escape from anonymity. The viewer is confronted with images of persons in the grip of extreme emotions, dancing, mad, in trance. Extreme close-up views and a dramatic chiaroscuro rendition give them a sculptural presence and make apparent the artist's fascination with Andy Warhol's Screentests of visitors to his studio with 'star quality'. The distorted contours of Denzler's figures, however, escape any precise interpretation. Their life is perceived in passing, their moment of joy or agony a mere fleeting impression. Many of the original images used for Denzler's portraits result from photo sessions with his friends. He instructs them to act either like a movie character, such as Jessica Tandy in Hitchcock's The Birds or Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,or else to cite a general film-cliché similar to Cindy Sherman in her Untitled Film Stills. Also found images from contemporary mass media, publicity, and pictures from social internet platforms provide templates for his close-ups. Denzler is fascinated with the concept of the Lost-ID generation, the teenagers who try to define themselves via their webcam to an unknown audience and get personal with no one in particular.
Pop-culture images provide Denzler with an artistic, ready-made vocabulary. He paints the 'images trouvées' with precision only to distort them when complete. With his technique, Denzler manages to visualise the act of painting, the creative and the destructive part, thus also highlighting his own role as the maker and 'narrator' of the depicted scenes and stills in the show.
Biography: Andy Denzler lives and works in Zurich. He trained at Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich and F&F Schule für Gestaltung, Zurich, at University of California, Los Angeles, the Art Center of Design, Pasadena, and received his Master of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, in 2006. Andy Denzler has had solo and group shows at commercial galleries all over Europe and in the US (Los Angeles, New York). Works by Denzler are included in national and international public collections, amongst which the White House Washington DC, Museum Würth in Schwäbisch Hall Germany, the Burger Collection Switzerland and Hong Kong, the White Cube Collection, London.
