„Wer guckt wem was weg? | Who is looking something away from whom?"
painting cycle (oil on paper and oil on nettle), 2021

In a series of new paintings, the focus is on the "making of" and evaluation of painting by means of infographics, statistics, bar charts and gaze analyses. The evaluation and appraisal of the painting on the painting itself complicates or even makes it impossible to view the original painting and generates visual short-cuts. The quality parameters and evaluation criteria used fluctuate between approving and disapproving. What would it be like if, at every football match, the gaggle of reporters reported directly from the action? Every adequate documentary brings its own staging context into the picture. Or the assessment of an interview contribution is always brought in live in advance/parallel. Possible self-criticism as a way of speaking alongside other formats also comes into play. How many steps were necessary for the picture between wall, paint tubes and chair? How many mentally traffic-stopped brushstrokes does the painting contain? Who looks away from what? It is also about the persiflage in fragile garb of a medium that still likes to deal with itself, in the hope or positing that an exclusively interior will eventually produce edges that could also represent an exterior. These visualised feedback effects also show the instruments of painting and the painter himself at work.

Gunter Reski was born in Bochum, lives in Berlin and Offenbach, where he has been a professor of painting at the Hochschule für Gestaltung since 2013. He studied fine arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and has been represented with his work at art venues and galleries in Berlin, Cologne and Jena. He is also active as a curator.

www.gunterreski.de