From his very beginnings in the late 1980s, Rudolf Stingel (*1956) has approached painting in a conceptual and self-reflexive manner, exploring its possibilities and media-specific limits through the interplay of artistic strategies, materials and shapes. Based on his confrontation with classic pictorial themes, he develops a wealth of motif variations. Alongside various series of abstract and photorealist paintings, he creates large-scale works made of Styrofoam or cast metal, as well as spaces covered in carpets or reflective silver insulation panels. Notwithstanding their material disparities, all these works share the random or deliberate painterly traces that appear on their surface.
Certain brand new paintings created only this year will be on view for the very first time. The show will also present new site-specific works using carpets and insulation panels in the museum’s exhibition and restaurant spaces.
The exhibition has been conceived in close collaboration between the artist and guest curator Udo Kittelmann, a long-standing expert of Rudolf Stingel’s work.