ALEXANDER DIK

Berlin Compositions, Dik’s debut solo show at JARILAGER Gallery Seoul, is a goal checked off. Featuring his recent body of work, from paintings and works of paper to sculpture, the exhibition marks a new chapter in the exceptional journey of this ‘Berlin kid’ in the arts. His works are bold and unfiltered, much like his city, filled with all its contradictions, its violence, and its wounded, uprooted, and feverish heroes.

After years of suppressing his talent, Alexander Dik is now experiencing a working trance. Each morning, he wakes up early and heads to his new studio: a spacious, airy shed in the heart of Brandenburg’s countryside. Unlike many artists, he does not suffer from the impasse of facing a blank canvas. For him, the challenge is how to contain the flood of ideas rushing out. He typically works on multiple series at once, often across several canvases simultaneously, both vertically and horizontally. He loves to place a canvas under his feet while he paints, allowing it to collect splashes of colour, the imprints of his steps, and even the ashes of his cigarettes. These ‘floor paintings’ unintentionally capture the full spectrum of the creative process, from the raw materiality of his movements to the residue of his artistic rituals. For Alexander, they hold equal value to those produced with deliberate intention.

Above all, Alexander Dik is a craftsman. His art, at once neo-expressionist and symbolic, blends a profound mastery of oil paint—his ‘true language,’ as he calls it—with a relentless drive to experiment with different techniques. He works with brush, spatula, and spray, but his paintings often seem like they had been made by different hands. Few artists work in such a wide range of approaches. At times, he flings paint onto the canvas in dribbled patterns, echoing the energy of Jackson Pollock. At other times, colours fold into mountainous formations, protruding from the surface like fleshy contours. There are moments in which he arranges paint blobs on the canvas, then sweeps them with a wide spatula—just like that, a single move and the work is complete. Yet there are also longer battles, where he stratifies layer over layer, only satisfied when colours magically suck the viewer into their depths. Excitement peaks when he presses one canvas against another, letting the imprint of an ongoing work guide the birth of something new—a process charged with physical intensity and unpredictability.

Alexander is as wild with his canvases as he is with himself. The paintings chosen for Berlin Compositions deal in a very direct, pitiless way with grand themes linked to the personal and collective struggles of being German: origin, displacement, youth, wrath, but also politics, war, history, and art history. These themes, especially the aggressive, destructive beauty of their execution, provoke and unsettle, yet speak to the very soul. Georg Baselitz once said, ‘If I had been born elsewhere, I would have certainly made happier pictures.’ Alexander would fully agree with this sentiment. His connection to Baselitz is explicit, as seen in Alte Moderne, a clear reference to one of Baselitz’s most scandalous works: Die große Nacht im Eimer (1963). Baselitz’s painting, which caused a courtroom drama for its disturbing subject—a grotesque figure with an erect penis and a Hitleresque haircut – was even confiscated by the Berlin prosecutor. Dik, in his own way, embraces this legacy. As a man, he is a fighter, a risk-taker; his choice to be an artist remains scandalous to those who once opposed it. As a painter, he is a defier, a seeker—one who dares to look where others cannot or would rather not. He is, in every sense, an armed poet.

‘At three years old, I painted cars with sixteen wheels; they laughed. At nine, I painted forbidden symbols; they punished me. At sixteen, I painted swamps; they said I was crazy. At twenty, I wanted to study art; they forbade it. At thirty-five, I began studying art; they said I was unwell. The fear of others took many years from me. Do not live with the fear of others. Live your dream now and without delay.’

Alexander Dik