Norbert Schwontkowski: Blind Faith

Ok, judgement day can come!

In view of the painterly work of Norbert Schwontkowski, born in Bremen in 1949, the fundamental question arises: What form of painting is still possible at all as a result of technological change and the associated loss of both one's own world of experience and one's own physical identity? Florian Waldvogel, Director of the Kunstverein Hamburg, scrutinises this connection in "Die Hölle in Zeitlupe", his contribution as editor of this volume, which finally makes the work of the popular North German painter accessible again in book form after the last publications have been out of print for some time. But there is also the "Schwontkowskieske", as Jens Hoffmann, deputy director of the Jewish Museum, New York, emphasises in his essay. On the one hand, this can be the painted dry wit, recently ennobled by Richard Prince, but on the other hand it can also be the seemingly Kafkaesque, gloomy and impasto-painted doomsday scenario, the smog in the sculpture park, for example, through which an avalanche of cars is rolling, or a highway lost in the setting sun. It is this tragicomic quality of the canvases that possibly provides the colourful prelude to ... Judgement Day.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein in Hamburg, 26/1 - 14/4/2013