Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Inside Out, Andreas Schulze's first solo exhibition in Asia. A key figure in contemporary painting since the 1980s, Schulze has developed a visual language all his own between abstraction and figuration, in which domestic spaces and scenic landscapes take on attitudes and proportions that are humorous, unnerving, and always unique.
With its precisely composed installation, Inside Out offers a bold statement of Schulze's painterly ideas in two and three dimensions and illuminates the core ideas and vocabulary of forms that drive his incomparable oeuvre. Freely adopting painting styles derived variously from Surrealism, Naive Art, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, interiors filled with chairs, curtains, windows and other everyday architectural features interact playfully with the actual architecture of the space; while exterior scenes depicting cars, brick walls, clouds and other outdoor elements create exuberant processions along the gallery walls.
Entering the exhibition, viewers encounter two divided yet interconnected worlds. On walls of light green, canvases that depict outside realms reveal from the start Schulze's clever interplay between depicted and physical space, as well as his balance of banal imagery with otherworldly feeling. Untitled (Demande au bouleau) (2022) opens up the view to a city park that contains a simple bench, lamppost, tree trunk and balloons, yet one has blown away toward a surreal burst of smoke that seems to overtake the painting. Driving around the corner nearby, Untitled (Rolling Stone touring) (2020) illustrates one of Schulze's many recurring motifs, the automobile, whose boxy body and over-decorated hubcaps give way to another, more ominous smoke cloud in Untitled (High cloud / autostrada) (2020).
Schulze's lyrical, if also comic, positioning of his paintings guides visitors to the exhibition's second zone: the inside. Installed on walls painted a rich, chocolate brown, Untitled (Interieur with barrier) (2023) and Untitled (Interieur with hairstyle) (2023) brilliantly demonstrate the artist's handling of space and the theatrical stage-like interiors for which he is so well known. In Untitled (Interieur with barrier)—whose brown walls and doorway mirror those of the gallery itself—a chair and a spiraling staircase surround a traffic sign and barriers, which seem to invade from the exterior world and generate an abrupt moment of abstraction. Untitled (Interieur with hairstyle) also includes abstract paintings-within-a-painting, this time joined by tufts of hair, curtains and even potted flowers, whose pink bursts echo the canvas behind it
At another architectural juncture is the historical work Dirt corner (1985), which together with the car on the opposite side of the gallery, neatly brackets the exhibition space. Here, Schulze continues his examination of the interior, pointing out overlooked but fundamental architectural elements such as the corner. Using a domestic material and concept—carpet and dirt—he creates a curious metaphysical portal into territories unknown, which is picked up once more in the pierced darkness of Untitled (Beijing tunnel) (2024). Across the joining wall, a series of canvases and objects produce a 'modular' painting, whose imagery of curtains, mirrors, trains and cars further emphasizes the thematics of staging, movement and immersion that run throughout the exhibition
At the core of Inside Out, a central wall connects both areas of the exhibition physically and conceptually, using another crucial motif in Schulze's visual lexicon, the window. On one side of the wall, four of the artist's window paintings offer a view from the outside to the inside. On the other side, the wall seems to literally open up into a panoramic window; painted wallpaper forms the frame and directs the view from the inside to the outside. A group of small paintings appears in the framed field—each work depicts twisting white shapes that suggest sculptural bodies in action and repose, perched atop Schulze's characteristic brick walls. Their titles refer to sporting activities like gymnastics, yoga and wrestling, rendering the static moment of sculpture into a dynamic process while, at the same time, linking to the urban environment where such exercises are often practiced outdoors in public parks.
By emphasizing the window, Schulze gestures in part to the concept of painting as a 'window onto the world' dating back to Renaissance art. His windows, however, refuse any obvious, idealized view; instead, they keep viewers engaged in a back-and-forth exploration of inside and out, reality and fantasy, past and present. Moving through this space, with all its recognizable human features, we unconsciously understand that Schulze's magical world is our world, our life, inside and out. Bodies are absent, heightening our presence even further—we complete Schulze's pictures. Even through the humor and levity of his iconography, Schulze is always suggesting deeper levels of psychological depth and inquiry.
Press release courtesy Sprüth Magers.
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