UWE KOWSKI

Education

Kowski attended the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig between 1984 and 1989, where he studied painting and graphics.

Uwe Kowski Artworks

Kowski paints intuitively, though often with a rough plan for composition, to capture moments drawn from his observations or imaginations. Central to his paintings are ongoing concerns with colour, the spontaneity of brush strokes, and their form, shape and direction.

Colour

In his watercolours and oil paintings, Kowski translates the three-dimensional world into masses of colours to stimulate an interplay of shadow and light. Kalte Schatten (Cold Shadows) (2018), for instance, shows a graduation of hues, in which daubs of paint vertically shift from white, yellow and pale blue to vivid blues and shots of green and orange towards the bottom of the canvas. The colour grey undergoes a deconstruction in Beton / Schatten (Concrete / Shadows), another painting from 2018, consisting of the various shades of grey as well as specks of yellow, white, blue and pink.

Titles

Though seldom literal, the titles of Kowski’s works can provide an entry into a chain of associations. The long vertical strokes in Tränen (Tears) (2015) recall trails of tears or raindrops, while the range of de-saturated and bright colours interspersed with coal-black evoke the negative emotions—confusion, frustration, anger—that may lead to tears. By comparison, Meer (Sea) (2020) is less intuitive in capturing the content of its title: the body of water typically abstracted into shades of blue is dominated by yellow, over which Kowski has marked small, angular strokes in blue, white and red.

Translations of abstract concepts into the two-dimensional also reveal an arbitrary yet evocative relationship between Kowski’s title and painting. For the artist, Tagtraum (Daydream) (2019) consists of blue, red, pink, yellow and white, rendered in small, wide or angular brush strokes to make up a field of colours. In Stille (2020), silence is portrayed as an assortment of white, pale pink and pastel blue colours that gradually shift into more saturated hues as they progress towards the bottom of the canvas.

Exhibitions

Kowski’s paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally.

Exhibiting with Galerie EIGEN + ART since the late 1990s, Kowski has held the solo exhibitions Stille (2020); Album (2019); MATRIX (2017); and treiben (2015), among others, at the gallery’s Berlin and Leipzig locations. Selected solo exhibitions of Kowski’s work also include sehen, Kunsthalle Rostock, Germany (2020); Beton, Galerie Born, Born auf dem Darß, Germany (2018); Leipziger Jahresausstellung, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany (2009); Uwe Kowski, Malerei 2001-2008, Kunsthalle Emden, Germany (2008).

Selected group exhibitions include reloaded, Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig (2020); Der optimierte Mensch: Momente der Industriekultur in der bildenden Kunst, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig (2019-20); INTER YOUTH, Museum of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2017); ... und immer wieder der Mensch, Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany (2016).

Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022