Handel Street Projects 14 Florence Street, London N1
Stefan Sehler New Paintings
25 September - 25 October 2014
Opening times Thursday - Friday 12:00 - 18:00
Saturday 11:00 - 13:00 and by appointment
For our first exhibition at 14 Florence Street, Handel Street Projects is pleased to
present a series of new paintings by Berlin based artist Stefan Sehler.
Made specially for this show, these works continue into the exploration of what
constitutes painting, the relationship between abstraction and representation,
challenging and stretching the possibilities of this medium all the time. On this
occasion the paintings are abstract, almost monochrome, reminiscent of old
black and white photographs of the jagged moon surface from NASA's archives.
The central point of this work revolves around the surface, reality and illusion.
Stefan Sehler paints on the back of the Perspex so that the otherwise textured
surface is hidden, refusing the painting this constitutive feature and depriving the
viewer of the tentative eye. The painterly surface seems neither behind nor at the
Perspex but rather suspended within it. They possess a double objective: they
mimic the photograph and on the other level we see the landscape surfaces
where paint is purely autonomous, playing with our visual perception and
preconceptions about the painting itself. As Donald Kuspit said about Stefan's
work: 'These captivating paintings demonstrate that modernist painting is not
necessarily dead -it still has some tricks up its sleeve - and show that a quasi -
photorealistic picture can have a message every bit as striking as the dazzling
technique it employs'.
Stefan Sehler studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. His works are in many
important private and public collections including Collection Sandretto Re
Rebaudengo, Deutsche Bank Collection, The Foundation Louis Vuitton, Musee
d'Art moderne et d'Art contemporain de Nice and Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf
