Gallery exhibition - 2020
Stephan Melzl
Helden, Grundanstrich
  • Dates
    16 May 2020 - 4 July 2020
  • Opening reception
    Friday, 15 May 2020, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
  • Artists
Text
Obscure dream, lascivious game, the impertinent painting of Stephan Melzl
Obskurer Traum, laszives Spiel, die unverschämte Malerei von Stephan Melzl

by Bernhart Schwenk

Melzl’s paintings had their genesis in a particular situation in the history of art. By the mid-1990s, the traditional idea of painting as an authentic artistic form was finally outdated. People had become mistrustful of the medium that had been considered the authoritative genre for centuries and it required a certain courage to start seriously devoting one’s attentions to it again. Melzl belongs to that generation of artists – at the time, between 30 and 40 – who helped painting to once again become the subject of the current discourse on art, but this time with a changed self-image.

With great precision, Melzl creates images that are shamelessly impertinent. In their confusing combination of the serious and the witty they can be read as ways of correcting a one-sided view of the world, as a contamination of unjustified illusions of an ideal world, as an anarchic reprise of subjects banished to the private sphere – and thus as a comprehensive questioning of the mechanisms of social rules and constraints. The precisely calculated exaggeration with which Melzl operates could be seen as a poisonous injection into trust in false security, as a weapon against the kind of incorrect notions of an idyllic life which people hang on to for far too long. However, all of our ideas of paradise are contradicted by the incalculability and transients of life, in the way that they gloss over aspects that are an integral part of life: lust, sexuality, hardship, fear, shame, seduction and abuse. For Melzl, illusions are definitely tempting places of refuge, but also dangerous ones. Because when illusions are confused with actual experience they prevent an unimpeded view of reality. By contrast, a disillusioned view of the world can no longer disappoint, it strengthens and protects. The pictorial world of Stephan Melzl is thus not only concerned with ambivalent motifs. Rather, its concern is extending and focusing the viewer’s gaze which is directed at the scenarios staged by the artist. This gaze allows for all kinds of unbiased associations. Rejecting aesthetic and moral codices it is liberating and a humorous relief

Die Malerei von Stephan Melzl ist in einer besonderen kunsthistorischen Situation entstanden. Mitte der 1990er Jahre war die traditionelle Auffassung von Malerei als einem authentischen künstlerischen Mittel endgültig überholt. Misstrauisch stand man jenem Medium gegenüber, das über Jahrhunderte als die maßgebende Kunstgattung angesehen worden war, und es bedurfte eines gewissen Muts, sich ihm wieder ernsthaft zuzuwenden. Stephan Melzl zählt zu jener Künstlergeneration der damals Dreißig- bis Vierzigjährigen, die der Malerei mit einem veränderten Selbstverständnis zur Rückkehr in die aktuelle Kunstdiskussion verhalf.

Melzls Bilder sind auf eine treffgenaue Weise unverschämt. In ihrer irritierenden Verbindung von Ernsthaftigkeit und Witz können sie als Korrekturen einer einseitig vereinnahmten Weltauffassung gelten, als Kontaminationen unberechtigter Illusionen von einer heilen Welt, als eine anarchische Wiederaufnahme ins Private verdrängter Themen – und damit auch ganz umfassend als eine Hinterfragung von Mechanismen sozialer Regeln und Zwänge. Die präzise kalkulierte Übertreibung, mit der Stephan Melzl operiert, könnte als giftige Injektion in das Vertrauen auf falsche Sicherheiten verstanden werden, als Waffe gegen verlogene Vorstellungen von idyllischen Lebenswelten, an denen der Mensch allzu lange festhält. Doch alle Paradiesvorstellungen widersprechen der Unberechenbarkeit und Vergänglichkeit des Lebens, indem sie Aspekte ausblenden, die untrennbar zum Leben gehören: Lust, Sexualität, Bedrängnis, Angst, Scham, Verführung oder Missbrauch. Illusionen sind für Stephan Melzl durchaus verlockende Zufluchtsorte, aber eben auch gefährliche. Denn wenn Illusionen mit tatsächlichen Erfahrungen verwechselt werden, verhindern sie die uneingeschränkte Sicht auf die Wirklichkeit. Eine desillusionierte Sicht auf die Welt hingegen kann nicht mehr enttäuschen, sie stärkt und schützt. In der Bildwelt von Stephan Melzl geht es somit nicht nur um die mehrdeutigen Motive. Vielmehr geht es um eine Erweiterung und Schärfung des Betrachterblicks, der auf die Inszenierungen des Künstlers geworfen wird. Dieser Blick lässt unvoreingenommen unterschiedlichste Assoziationen zu, er wirkt abseits ästhetischer oder moralischer Kodizes befreiend und auf humorvolle Weise erleichternd

Excerpt from Stephan Melzl, 2014

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Press
Painter Stephan Melzl Packs a Lot of Surreal Superhero Imagery Into Tiny Canvases at This Basel Gallery Show-See It Here

by Caroline Goldstei, Artnet*

What the gallery says: “Melzl’s paintings had their genesis in a particular situation in the history of art. By the mid-1990s, the traditional idea of painting as an authentic artistic form was finally outdated. People had become mistrustful of the medium that had been considered the authoritative genre for centuries and it required a certain courage to start seriously devoting one’s attentions to it again. Melzl belongs to that generation of artists—at the time, between 30 and 40—who helped painting to once again become the subject of the current discourse on art, but this time with a changed self-image.

For Melzl, illusions are definitely tempting places of refuge, but also dangerous ones. Because when illusions are confused with actual experience, they prevent an unimpeded view of reality. By contrast, a disillusioned view of the world can no longer disappoint, it strengthens and protects. The pictorial world of Stephan Melzl is thus not only concerned with ambivalent motifs. Rather, its concern is extending and focusing the viewer’s gaze, which is directed at the scenarios staged by the artist. This gaze allows for all kinds of unbiased associations. Rejecting aesthetic and moral codices, it is liberating and a humorous relief.”

Why it’s worth a look: Stephan Melzl might be working on a small scale, but he packs a lot into each canvas. In his new show at Basel-based gallery Nicolas Krupp, paintings are hung at eye level, each containing a surreal world filled with characters straddling the banal and the supernatural. The show’s title, “Helden, Grundanstrich,” loosely translated to “Heroes, First Coat,” implies that the figures populating the images are only loosely sketched as heroes; they are rough drafts, the first coat on which the work will build.

Many of the figures actually hold paintbrushes, as if they are painting the layers of one other until the story is complete. In the titular piece, a group of figures stand at attention like soldiers wearing matching trooper hats as Batman’s logo glows behind them in the night sky. In front of them, a woman holding a paint can with the Superman logo on it stops mid-stroke, taking a break from her work. It’s as if the painter awoke in the middle of a dream and allowed you to step inside his mind as the rendered he scene on the canvas.

*read original Artnet article, 21 May 2020

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