Herbert X. MaierComplementary

In his most recent picture tableaux, Herbert X. Maier (the X. stands for his second name, Xavér) has arrived at astonishing combinations of abstract works – in some cases even older, abstract and impasto ones – 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 procedure. Ever since he was at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris 20 years ago, he has built up his pictures layer by layer with direct underpainting, over which he lays several thick glazes. This reflects his conception of painting as a store of realities beyond the picture and shows how these can find their precipitate in the picture. The realistic parts of the motif – a tipped porcelain bowl, for example, painted in old-masterly gradations of pale blue – by contrast convey the reference to reality directly, and yet it is precisely these that are distinguished by a voluminous depth. Through the up to 80 layers of glaze the external light shifts into the interior of the motif, as though the picture were suddenly glowing from within. Herbert X. Maier describes the confrontation of the abstract with the representational 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, volume, depth and surface structure, the stable and the unstable all at once.”

Exhibition:
Morat-Institut für Kunst und Kunstwissenschaft, Freiburg, 23/1 – 25/10/2022