CHRISTIAN ACHENBACH

In GENESIS, the foreground consists of an abstract pattern that evokes the enlargement grids used by Renaissance painters to transfer sketches onto larger panels. Its minimalism contrasts with the vivid landscape behind it. Like a rotating theater stage opening onto different settings, Achenbach multiplies viewpoints, overwhelming and disrupting our sense of perspective. The multiplicity of perspectives recalls what the Chinese painter Guo Xi (1020–1090) described as an “angle of totality,” in which the landscape is apprehended from different vantage points. The painting becomes a world in itself, offering not one fixed path of vision but an abundance of possible itineraries.

A significant aspect of this new body of work is the still lifes. Set by a window or on a spacious terrace framed by luxurious curtains, these compositions feature vases holding flowers that seem to stem directly from the landscape beyond. Although timeless, they hint at a human presence. Achenbach is also revisiting motifs from his own oeuvre. His VANITAS series (2012–2017) consisted of floral compositions set against geometric backgrounds. Later, from 2021 onwards, his interior scenes opened onto cubistic windows and door frames leading to vast empty landscapes dominated by dreamlike blue skies. In these new works, the luxuriant landscapes he has been developing over the last few years seem to contract into the background, creating a dynamic tension between interior and exterior, Cubism and Fauvism.

ECHOTROPIA is a place of echoes, an unmapped territory beyond atlases where Achenbach weaves together diverse pictorial traditions while gradually becoming part of the lineage he engages with.