07 Mar 2010

Matthias Moravek at Galerie Greulich, Frankfurt

Matthias Moravek: Base Camp

The recent works of the Berlin based painter deal with aspects of exploring, discovering and taking possession of new landscapes, regions, countries and continents. Set in mostly tropical sceneries the people displayed find themselves in polychromatic, mostly tropical or exotic, landscapes. The paintings are not about discovering an existing reality but about getting lost in a world of colours and patterns. Thus the process of painting itself becomes a subject of the paintings. Most of them contain some kind of mobile architecture such as tents, camps, huts and other temporary buildings which are a reference to the shelter of civilisation.

The works combine views of expeditions and discoveries with contemporary painting that mainly deals with the presence and absence of those „exotic' sceneries. They all refer to the desire of discovering the unknown as an enterprise both adventurous, ambitious and ambivalent. Matthias Moravek´s painting style distinguishes itself through expressive gestures, which are nevertheless defeated by the consequence of self-imposed formality. His paintings embody various possibilities in their innate picturesque expression. Although his objective is to reveal the people, animals and buildings with the use of an abstractly created mixture of colour, they are not over-represented. His motifs change between figuration and abstraction and succumb to a picturesque alienation process.

"Base Camp" ist the third solo exhibition of Matthias Moravek at the Galerie Greulich in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

Matthias Moravek was born 1976 in Mühlacker, Germany. He studied fine arts at the "Universität der Künste" in Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin.