Herbert X. Maier: Complementary

Painting as a repository of extra-pictorial realities

In his most recent pictorial tableaux, Herbert X. Maier (the X. stands for his second name Xavér) has found astonishing combinations of abstract, in some cases even older abstract-pastose, works and new realistic motifs, which he hangs as diptychs. He could not stage the contrast between abstract and realistic painting more starkly, and yet Herbert X. Maier remains true to his method. Since he was at the Cité des arts international in Paris 20 years ago, he has built up his paintings layer by layer with direct underpainting, over which he applies several thick glazes. This reflects his idea of painting as a repository of extra-pictorial realities and shows how these can find expression in the picture. The realistic motif elements - for example a tilted porcelain bowl, painted in old-masterly light blue gradients - convey the reference to reality directly, and yet they are characterised by a voluminous depth. The up to 80 layers of glaze shift the external light into the interior of the motif, as if the picture suddenly glows from within. Herbert X. Maier describes the confrontation between the abstract and the figurative as follows: "In the complex, the abstract becomes the figurative. Maier describes the confrontation of the abstract with the figurative as follows: "In the complementarity of the pictorial confrontation, I seek the gap and the transition between the genres, the closed and the open, the static and the fluid, the volume, the depth and the surface structure, the stable and the unstable at the same time."

Exhibition:
Morat Institute for Art and Art History, Freiburg i. Br., 23/1 - 25/10/2022