Jürgen Grölle - Sven Drühl
New Works - Paintings
Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago
June 7 - July 6, 2002
Fassbender Stevens Gallery presents German artists Jürgen Grölle, in the North Gallery, and Sven Drühl, in the Project Room.
Jürgen Grölle, a contemporary abstractionist, is a painter who considers the complexities and contradictions of formalism. The performance of improvisational painting is always present in Jürgen Grölle's work as he seeks with ardor the kind of picturing which is an alternative to the exponentially rapid development of the virtual world.
Jürgen Grölle applies bulging areas of paint straight from the tube in juxtaposition to his thin strips of monochrome color fields. A neo-expressionist landscape of sorts emerges. He establishes a visual system based on color, only to "attack" it with another color. This results in a provocative concentration of painterly events. Fields of gestural spontaneity exist in a fragile equilibrium. Contemporary hues, textures and finishes are at times awkward yet always jubilant.
Concurrently in the project room, Fassbender Stevens Gallery presents the paintings of German artist Sven Drühl, a contemporary of Jürgen Grölle's. Sven Drühl approaches painting as a conceptual endeavor and often appropriates popular and art historical imagery. The appropriated images are always transformed in a considerable way to create a dialogue of history, painting and contemporary conceptual pursuits. Though Sven Drühl often criticizes painting and thinks that nowadays one really shouldn't paint any more, it's all he wants to do. He feels that it would be very easy to use a video camera just for the hipness of it. The spirit of the times may be somewhere else, but nevertheless he paints.
FASSBENDER STEVENS GALLERY
835 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60607
www.fassbendergallery.com
