Sebastian Ludwig
Press Release
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Galerie Richard has the pleasure to announce the representation of the artist Sebastian Ludwig and the exhibition of his new works from October 19th till December 1st, 2018.
Sebastian Ludwig is not a prolific painter. He takes the time necessary to develop works which have a density of visual testament on our contemporary time for the future generations. His paintings already seem to possess this patina, this effect of progressive disappearance peculiar to very old paintings. His visual references are paintings and engravings of the Middle Ages and the Romantic painters.
His perfectly static representations seem to us at the same time familiar and enigmatic. His new paintings show aerial views of indefinite cities. Buildings are reduced to geometrical volumes. No human being is visible. The geometry of the city planning is enough for giving evidence of the human presence, as well as the chaotic luxuriance of the plant space is enough to define it. The paintings are close to monochromes; the color is watered down.
Besides the support of the paint seems to alter the representation. On a reproduction in photography we think that the artist chose a thick square grid textile as canvas. The painting seems contrived to vertical and horizontal lines cutting the painting into squares that we could assimilate to pixels.
In fact, the grid is made with paint after he cuts out the squares from the tape which he put on the canvas before. Several layers of paint with pigments create the grid. Then he cuts and removed the adhesive tapes of squares and he paints each square.
The apprehension of such paintings therefore cannot be immediate. They require and thus invite in a pondering, in a slow absorption. For it Sebastian Ludwig's works have this capacity to become integrated durably into the memory of that or the one who look at them.
It is the first exhibition of Sebastian Ludwig’s paintings in France.
Sebastian Ludwig was born in Groß-Strehlitz, Poland. He lives and works in Düsseldorf.His works are in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles, the USA, Frieder Burda Museum, Baden-Baden, Germany, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, the USA, Museum Goch, Goch, Germany, Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada, Rheingold Collection, Germany, Staatskanzlei NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany, Collection Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany.
He exhibited Jablonka Luhn, Cologne, Patrick Painter Inc, Santa Monica, Sperone Westwater, New York, Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf.