Galerie Burster is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of painter Alex Feuerstein. The title of the exhibition, Intimate Play, is defined by a staging that does not require many actors and takes place in an intimate setting on a stage or in front of the camera.

By restricting it to just a few actors and objects, this production achieves a psychological depth and the viewer's attention to the protagonists and their inner and outer conflicts – the few selectively used objects are often symbolically charged. Feuerstein's protagonists are mostly curvy women, or rather their bodies, which are sometimes defragmented, barely discernible as such, but sometimes also completed and softly telling their stories and sceneries.

They fight, wrestle and wriggle along with strange and creepy creatures, but also struggle with themselves, their likeness and bear – if you want to see it so – references to gender issues. Pop cultural references of the subjets' bodies and clothing shows how contemporary they are, like their curvyness, their muffin tops and camel toes, or their camouflage-like patterned garments. However, Feuerstein works in his oil-pigment paintings on wooden ground without any motivic template and allows random forms and textures to influence the further steps in the creative process of his work. Especially his recent work shows that it is the textures and their contrasts that interest him. Thus, the observer's focus is lost in Feuerstein's earthy and pastel-colored texture landscapes. In his collage and camouflage-like compositions in which subjects and objects, foreground and background seem to merge, Feuerstein invites us to participate in his interpretive staging that immerse us in his intimate, bizarre, idiosyncratic world.

Alex Feuerstein (*1981 in Heidelberg) lives and works in Karlsruhe. He completed his studies 2013 at the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe as a master student of Prof. Erwin Gross. At the same time and for the first time Gary Schlingheider's colorful outdoor sculptures will be on view in the courtyard garden of the gallery. In the showroom we will also present medium and small scale paintings and steel objects of the artist.