Vom Wesen des Seins (On the Essence of Being)

Vom Wesen des Seins (On the Essence of Being)

Armin Baumgarten

Opening on
Thursday, April 20, 2023 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Duration of the exhibition:
April 21 – May 21, 2023.

Visits by appointment.

Armin Baumgarten is a painter and sculptor. He studied at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. Since the end of his studies he lives and works in Düsseldorf.

Armin Baumgarten has undergone a very interesting artistic development in recent years. While the first phase of his studies initially involved experimenting with pure painting and, at best, invented pictorial forms resulting from it, an increasing interest in iconographic references to the visible world and to the handed-down fund of images from past times began. The logical consequence was to turn to the most elementary theme of art history, the image of man.

For more than a decade, the theme of the head in the form of a canvas-filling face was at the center of his painting. The pictorial motif was the dialogical counterpart in the painting process, a dialogue with the motif, but also with painting itself. From the originally rather spontaneous, liquid color treatment began over time an increasingly lengthy work process of a pastose, modeling design, a compression of form, which led consistently to the occupation with sculpture.

Meanwhile, painting and sculpture have an equal status in the work of Armin Baumgarten and influence each other dialogically.

The new exhibition “Vom Wesen des Seins” with paintings and a sculpture shows medium – and large-format tableaus with iconographic form inventions, form condensations super-elementary themes such as head, figure, figure and landscape. The play with the pure colors, both in their haptics and in their fine, nuanced sounds, reveals blatantly that it is about the search for beauty. However, a beauty that only emerges when painting, that has something unfinished, ephemeral, transient, like life itself.

The artist’s field is nature, in which man is challenged to re-locate himself. On display is a sensual, haptic, creaturely painting and pictorial world that resists the abolitions and artificialities, the external smoothness of the media age, or at least complements and questions them.

The essence of being and that which constitutes it must continue to be discovered anew.
We are looking forward to your visit.

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