Austin EddyStill Life

“My aim is to create a space for you” says Austin Eddy, and In his painterly work he formulates contradictions, draws on the traditions of classical modernism and works on the balance between figuration and abstraction. In terms of motifs, birds, fish, and flowers play the leading role in his works. These figurative elements unfold into still lifes, landscapes and city views. Worked in strong colours and modulated by various textures of paint application, the pictorial elements enter into a perspectival togetherness, into a web of lines and planes, and thus become a complex structure of spatial overlappings. Similar pictorial motifs recur again and again in different formations, colours and combinations. This serial way of working and the abstracting quality of the motifs at first contradict the notion of a lively, growing and expressive depiction of nature. In fact the artist is concerned less with a spontaneous expression of closeness to nature than with an examination of how nature is conveyed in art. The titles of book and exhibition also point to this connection: Still Life – still alive, a freeze-frame – captured in an atmospheric work of luminous colours, lively border motifs, abstract planes of light. This play with distance and deep closeness to nature finds a poetic as well as minimalist articulation in the work of Austin Eddy.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 21/9 – 24/11/2024