ENTER THE VOID On abstraction and elliptical strategies in painting

This practical one week seminar focuses on the individual artistic exploration of abstraction processes within painting, the development of unique pictorial ideas and a vivid dialogue among the participants.

In a world saturated with images and information, this seminar challenges ideas of ‘enough’, by reducing form, colour and content as a way to develop consistent manners of painting.

Berlin’s empty lots, architectural gaps and silent spaces - places often perceived as abandoned or incomplete - become sites where ‘enough’ is redefined: enough space to breathe, to imagine and, most important, to evoke meaning through absence.

Taking Berlin’s abandoned listening station at Teufelsberg (Field Station Berlin on the cities highest lookout) and its architectural structures, views, insights and outsides as our starting point, the participants will investigate how abstraction processes of reduction, omission and elliptical strategies can help to develop individual artistic languages in painting.

Back in the studio, the painterly approach can be both playful and systematic, combining clear cuts with painterly gestures or experimenting with the grammar of different pictorial languages. Exploring Berlin’s urban structures and landscapes will lead to a huge number of different image ideas for the seminar. Practical exercises alternate with reflective phases and art theoretical impulses. A visit to Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie will offer a context for understanding how abstraction has been used to negotiate presence and absence, abundance and emptiness within the painting history of 20th century modernism. Ultimately, this seminar invites artists to cultivate a practice that finds richness in reduction, assuming that sometimes ‘enough’  is enough.

Schedule

Day 1 – Introduction to the seminar, first practical exercises at UdK
Insights and outsides: excursion to the abandoned listening station at Teufelsberg, graphic and photographic studies of the architectural structure and its surroundings

Day 2 – Painting studio at UdK Berlin, sketchbook review, drawing and painting exercises: from architecture and landscape to abstraction, development of individual image ideas and approaches, collecting alternate image ideas within the urban structures and landscapes of Berlin

Day 3 – Painting studio at UdK Berlin, excursus: the construction of pictorial spaces, individual artistic practice, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin: excursion into the history of painting, abstraction as artistic strategy of 20th century modernism

Day 4 – Painting studio at UdK Berlin, excursus: gestural habits and painterly surfaces

Day 5 – Painting studio at UdK Berlin, extended painting practice, final colloquium and presentation of the works

Knowledge requirements

Basic drawing skills

Equipment requirements

Sketchbook, drawing tools, brushes
Acrylic paint, tape and paper will be provided and are included in the seminar fee

When nature becomes form. Matthias Moravek’s paintings are an intensive and playful analysis of content, form and colour, exploring the wide range between abstraction and figuration.

In his recent works he draws inspiration from natural phenomena such as clouds, vulcanoes, forests and jungles and their cultural perception. The artistic appropriation of visual worlds is as important to his approach as scenic constructions of nature. His work includes sculptures, drawings, videos and works in public space, all directly derived from painting.

In 2007 he graduated form UdK Berlin after studying fine arts at Staatliche Kunstakademie Karlsruhe and UdK Berlin. Since 2005 his work was shown in national and international exhibitions in galleries, museums and project spaces and received scholarships and grants for working and exhibiting in Istanbul, Dakar (Senegal), LA and Mexico City among others. His teaching experience includes several lectureships at UdK Berlin for interdisciplinary artistic practice and painting.

www.matthiasmoravek.de