Dirk Eicken
September 10 – October 29, 2011
Painting, for Dirk Eicken, is a medium through which he explores both visual and social density and distortion. In his new body of work, Dirk Eicken engages with various current political issues (civil war, refugee movements, Third World trade). However, the expectation that he would present political images with a clear message is not fulfilled—on the contrary: Dirk Eicken addresses the impossibility of making a clear statement through the image. According to Eicken, answers are not to be found on the surface of the image, but rather through a deeper engagement with it.
The photographic documents that the artist finds on these topics and uses as references for his paintings do not offer a definitive answer to who the good or bad guys are, who the perpetrators or the victims are. The viewer is placed at the scene of the event, able to mingle with the participants and become part of the occurrence. Eicken paints the settings in a tradition of painting that works light and space out of the flat surface through painterly hints. However, he makes the events visible only as if through a thin film, like in a faded photograph.
At the same time, he overlays the narrative layer with formal ones: he develops painterly color spaces that bear no thematic or emotional connection to the events, he applies painterly structures that are used for camouflage, or paints wrappings made of thin films used for packaging. Dirk Eicken is not solely concerned with content; he is equally interested in the packaging through which content is transported and rendered ambiguous.
A catalog will be published to accompany the exhibition.
Installation Views
