Matthias Weischer

Braunes Zimmer is a prime example of Matthias Weischer’s work. A graduate of the now famous Leipzig Art Academy and widely recognized as being the leading young artist of his generation, like Neo Rauch before him, in 2005 he was awarded the Leipziger Volkzeitung Art Prize.

Beautifully composed, layers of paint built upon layers of paint create an almost archeological narrative on the canvas, while the objects rendered on its surface maintain an extraordinary delicacy and precision. Influenced by the German and Netherlandish painters of the Renaissance, Weischer explores space through the construction and de-construction of imagined interiors. In the present work, for instance, he creates a sense of spatial ambiguity that recalls Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece, The Arnolfini Marriage. Braunes Zimmer is a hauntingly anticipatory image. The people who inhabit the room are absent but one senses imminent repopulation or, like a ghost-room, that there has been some sudden departure. Some drama has occurred or is about to occur. The objects afford no clue to the inhabitants - they cannot be placed on a fashion time-line or indeed in a socio-economic group - and the room is windowless giving us no hint of in which city, country or even continent it might be. The room’s secret is not revealed.

The viewer immerses himself in the painting, drawn in by its intimate scale, by the domesticity of the scene, and by the colliding perspectives. The mirror in the middle of the painting reflecting yet more densely painted walls adds to the intensity, making the painting almost claustrophobic. Meanwhile, Weischer by layering the paint has created a resident narrative within the painting itself, glimpsed where the paint is scratched away. The thickness of the paint turns the walls into a physical object, a wall of pigment. The patterned furniture, lampshade, rug and the posters affixed to the wall recall representational clichés and remind the viewer, without descending into irony, of the formulaic nature of painted compositions. The whole room ends up appearing to be constructed not of walls and furniture but rather of colour planes; it becomes a sculpture made of paint.