Dirk Skreber

Blum and Poe Gallery, Los Angeles

Dirk Skreber's Untitled is one of the artist's most striking aerial compositions. Seen from above, a row of identical low cost houses and electricity pylons form two parallel lines engulfed in a vast expanse of still floodwater. The aerial vantage point, reminiscent of Andreas Gursky's photographic eye, encourages the viewer to see things in new ways, where familiar sights can become breathtaking vistas. In Untitled, Skreber's choice of perspective with no horizon line reduces the world to a geometrical arrangement of shapes presented in a restricted palette of beige, grey and green. The painting's elongated format accentuates its strict linear composition and stylistic order, subscribing to the minimalist aesthetic and purity of Donald Judd's Progressions. Yet, as two buildings are seemingly carelessly cropped away at the top of the painting, the image nevertheless has the hurried immediacy of a reportage photograph.

By taking a source image of a flooded suburbia, Skreber's depiction of the event's aftermath echoes Andy Warhol's series of disaster paintings. Unlike Warhol's graphic treatment of shocking scenes, however, in Skreber's work the immobilised objects now take on a pristine timelessness beauty. Silence fills the paintings and without people or traffic around, the houses become formal props with which the artist can experiment and the vast surface of muddy water becomes an opportunity to execute a beautifully delicate monochrome. Executed on an epic scale, the surface of Skreber's painting is first covered with packaging tape as a foundation for the oil paint. The resulting smooth, flawless surface has an almost reflective quality, shining and rippling in the light like the still surface of floodwater. Splattered in places with drips of paint, reminders of Skreber's painterliness, the tactile surface of oil paint is tempered by a slick industrial feel. Demonstrating his capacity for formal innovation, Untitled is a striking example of Skreber's technical zeal and spirit of artistic enquiry.