_Y8A6018_72px.jpg
Human Perspectives Catalogue Cover.jpg

Paintings of Disruption - Opera Gallery Seoul, 2019

After all, an aesthetic experience is more often found in wounds, cracks, protuberances, and creases than in sleekness. In other words, invasion, trauma, and contradictory movement are essential to art. According to Martin Heidegger, Artlanguage (image) originates from the act of puncturing and penetrating — or, ‘making something visible’ by opening a gap. Denzler’s studio practice is quite close to this definition of art. He literally breaks into the surface of the painting, then pushes paint around to summon sleekness on his canvas. He carves out layers of paint as if he is making a woodcut, or builds thick coats of paint on top. Eventually, his entire painting is turned into a gap, an opening that leads to somewhere else. Numerous three-dimensional collisions are overlaid on the sleek photographic image, covering the canvas like a thin veil. As the thick paint and crude brushstrokes gradually rise to the surface, the images ebb away like lifting a veil.

Human Perspectives – Opera Gallery Zurich, 2018

With his fragmented interior scenes and portraits, Andy Denzler is part of a group of contemporary artists who concentrate on figures and their representation in space. Not unlike Peter Doig’s ghostly figures or Yan Pei-Ming’s portraits painted with large brush strokes, Denzler paints the human figure - men and women who are anonymous and individualized at the same time. This group of international artists cast an insightful eye on our society through their figurative work. In our world overloaded with images, such artists were able to resist to the immediacy and urgency that the new media have to offer and give their images a new temporality, allowing the viewer to reflect and contemplate.

The Painters Room Catalogue Cover.jpg

The Painter’s Room – Opera Gallery Paris, 2018

As a result of this original aesthetic, Denzler’s creations merge the figurative and the abstract. It is, in fact, the picture of a woman, a man, a couple that one can see on the surface of the canvas combined with large colored areas, moving surfaces and distortions. Denzler integrates figures and scenes from everyday life as captured through photography. Thus, figuration leaves room to non-figuration and all is united in a neutral palette, composed of more subdued colors such as flesh tones, ochres and browns.

portraits-figures-interiors.jpg

Portraits. Figures & Interiors – BRAFA, Brussels, 2018

Another reason, is the fertile relationship that Denzler maintains between image and substance. There is a constant dialogue and mutual enrichment from these two poles. The paintings` subjects never end with the depiction of the image, nor is the act of painting reduced to a pure experimentation of the material. The viewer`s perception of the work wavers between pure abstraction and evocative portrayal. This experience is enhanced by the neutral and muted colors that the artist uses.

fragmented-identity.jpg

Fragmented Identity - Damiani, Bologna, 2017

Andy Denzler combines a variety of media in his art practice, including painting, sculpture, and drawing. His works respond to traditional portrait painting through an expressive and multi-layered application of impasto oil paint and the subsequent removal thereof, resulting in the morphing of the image.

fragmented-figures.jpg

Fragmented Figures - Schultz Contemporary, Berlin, 2017

Andy Denzler`s new pictures captivate due to his brilliant painting technique, oscillating between the figurative and the abstract. At the core is the human being, mostly young and urban. Some of them are known to us by name: they are called `Billie-Jean` or `Katharina`. They stood model and Denzler took photos of them, for which the lighting was of paramount importance.

between-here-and-there.jpg

Between Here and There - Opera Gallery, London, 2016

In his new series Between Here and There, Andy Denzler explores the romantic idea of an artist’s existence in the urban environment: a creative mind surrounded by the decay of buildings, a search for identity within the fast - paced world.

suspended-reality.jpg

Suspended Reality - Opera Gallery, New York, 2016

Denzler’s pieces are snap-shots of events that take place in the span of mere moments, distorted in their movements, their timeframe artificially smeared and elongated into frozen eternities.

breakfast-with-velazguez.jpg

Breakfast with Velázquez - Schultz Contemporary, 2015

Our eyes glide over the surfaces of the „Photo Frame Paintings“ as if we were slipping and sliding down a snowy serpentine paths. We stand opposite snowy figures which seem to be secret weapons against climate change, as if they were hidden behind a wall off sleet. Denzler’s quiet, barren unreality is of the highest painterly attractiveness.

sequences.jpg

SEQUENCES - Opera Gallery, 2015

Realism and abstraction, immobility and motion, softness and violence, control and abandonment: the aesthetic and unsettling nature of Andy Denzler’s art lies in ambivalence and paradox, an art practiced like a choreography in several acts.

book_100 miradas.jpg

100 Miradas - Al Arte Contemporaneo, 2014

Distorted faces speak to us about the influence of media on our society today. Trough portraits with touches about surrealism, Denzler appeals to the search of identity and at the same time critisizes the unreal beauty of th pictures we see on a daily basis.

book_distote moments_website.jpg

Distorted Moments - Ludwig Museum 2014

His works move between abstraction and reality, using the classical applications of oil painting to broach the shifting lines between fiction and reality. Denzler's pieces are snap-shots of events that take place in the span of mere movements, blurred and distorted in their movements, their timeframe artificially smeared and elongated into frozen eternities.

neoexpressionism_zhanzhou_cover.jpg

Neo Expressionism - Zhan Zhou International, 2013

cover_rostock-final-tumbnail.jpg

Empire Inc. Kunsthalle Rostock 2013

developinglandscapes_cover_tumbnail.jpg

Developing Landscapes, Hypnotized, 2013

motionpainting_cover.jpg

Andy Denzler, Motion Paintings, 2010

American_Paintings_Cover.jpg

American Paintings - Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, 2005

These paintings are autonomous and at the same time part of a larger concept. Even regarded as single pieces, the connection between them should be kept in mind. This becomes ostensive as a sort of puzzle of a higher order, when the paintings, through hanging them accordingly, are put in opposition to each other ehre confrontation of opposing characters and political positions seemingly brings conflicts of historical relevance to a point.