 Doppeldinger, 2005 Oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 114 1/8 inches Christoph Worringer Lucas Schoormans Gallery is pleased to present the U.S. debut of the German painter Christoph Worringer (Krefeld, 1976). The exhibition will feature six monumental canvases from 2003 to 2005, plus a group of studio drawings for the complex allegorical painting "Doppeldinger" (2005). With sturdy, life-size figures rendered in oil, Worringer invokes the heroic scale and classical authority of the art-historical canon. The 30-year-old painter's technical assurance is on display in the varied treatment of the surfaces, yet the works remain formally restrained and stern in disposition. Worringer paints angular bodies and rough-hewn faces using moody colors that can seem both chemically generated and time-worn. Blind-eyed but otherwise unremarkable-looking individuals in pared-down contemporary dress enact cryptic mise en scènes that may represent pivotal encounters, occult rituals, or conflicts of great consequence. Citations from the history of painting (Pontormo, Rembrandt, Ingres) mingle with mysterious symbols and devices invented by the artist. Worringer's fondness for forced perspectives, abrupt jumps in scale, strange auras, and literary arcana evokes the elegant skepticism of Mannerism and the knowing irrationality of Surrealism. There is more than a hint of narcissism in the fact that nearly every male protagonist in the paintings is an effigy of the artist himself, sightless but physically engaged. Yet this very process of cloning throws the artist's singularity into question, subverting the assertion of a coherent and unique self. Worringer was one of twelve artists selected for the exhibition "Face to Face - Artists' Self-Portraits," February 11 - April 9, 2006, at the Ausstellungshalle zeitgenössische Kunst, Münster. His work will be included in "Back to the Figure - Contemporary Painting," an international survey of 21st-century figure painting that will open at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich on June 2 and run through August 13, 2006. A fully illustrated catalogue of Christoph Worringer's paintings is available at the gallery with a supplementary essay by Marcia E. Vetrocq. Exhibition: April 20 - June 10, 2006 Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10am - 6pm (Summer hours) Lucas Schoormans 508 W 26, # 11B USA-New York, NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 243 3159 Fax +1 212 243 5069 Email info@lucasschoormans.com www.lucasschoormans.com |
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