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Lot Essay
The apparently intimate interiors of Matthias Weischer'’s paintings invite the viewer into a realm entirely cut off from the outside world. His intriguing yet artificially constructed rooms play with the classical rules of perspective employed in the domestic interiors of 17th Century Flemish painting, yet at the same time confound any notion that these are conventionally figurative paintings: the deliberate abstraction of the thickly painted planes of colour and the disjointed forms create a sense of detachment that forbid the viewer to enter fully into the picture.
The tension between the richly textured surface and the absence of illusionistic light with the comfortingly familiar signs of life - carpets, pictures, old sofas - leaves the viewer struggling to read the painting, not knowing where reality ends and abstraction begins. This is not the interior as know it.
The notion of communal living in the 21st century is almost non-existent, and the representation of the interior in art as an end in itself, most notably in the form of installations such as those of Gregor Schneider, has become synonymous with the isolation of the individual in contemporary society. Weischer's is an interior world of the lowest common denominator, his rooms and corridors resembling the uniformly modernist interiors of DDR social housing, with is no suggestion of the individual taking refuge from the outside. Instead, the viewer is left to reflect in the empty stillness of these captivating, unreal and yet familiar rooms.
The tension between the richly textured surface and the absence of illusionistic light with the comfortingly familiar signs of life - carpets, pictures, old sofas - leaves the viewer struggling to read the painting, not knowing where reality ends and abstraction begins. This is not the interior as know it.
The notion of communal living in the 21st century is almost non-existent, and the representation of the interior in art as an end in itself, most notably in the form of installations such as those of Gregor Schneider, has become synonymous with the isolation of the individual in contemporary society. Weischer's is an interior world of the lowest common denominator, his rooms and corridors resembling the uniformly modernist interiors of DDR social housing, with is no suggestion of the individual taking refuge from the outside. Instead, the viewer is left to reflect in the empty stillness of these captivating, unreal and yet familiar rooms.