Souvenir

Suspended somewhere between abstraction and representation, the work of German artist Thomas Scheibitz is frequently regarded as "post-cubist," oscillating somewhere between painting and sculpture. Scheibitz draws much of his influence from artists such as Josef Albers, and in his art he seeks to update, or revitalize the Utopian principles put forward by the Bauhaus and Constructivist movements. Also influenced by the relationship between nature and technology, and how modern technology has affected our way of life, Scheibitz seeks to create a visual environment where the two collide. To the artist, the resulting image represents a superior, synthetic concept of reality where the ordinary is reconstructed as a glamorous commodity.

All of Scheibitz's paintings contain some recognisable feature as its basic reference point, and each is usually quite an ordinary one at that - either a flower, a set of stairs, some sort of building, or in this case, a snow globe containing an architectural form. He does not, however, allow for the subject to stay entirely identifiable; the entire composition is abstracted in such a way that each solid form is broken up into rough planes of colour with thickly painted outlines in complementary colours, leaving only the remnants of the original structure visible. Standing before one of these paintings, each of these colour fields seems to stand boldly alone, and yet simultaneously, the composition never seems entirely disjointed.

The subtle colours that he employs in his work along with the sophisticated, yet simplified abstracted landscape compositions that he creates, instill an unsettling feeling in the viewer. The brightly coloured surface and expressionist energy that saturates his painting are both thrilling and overwhelming for the viewer. Scheibitz simultaneously invites us into his world and keeps us at bay, unable to weave our way through the abstracted, wildly jagged forms.