RENÉ WIRTHS

Look at the world through a kaleidoscope, and you might see a similar geometric division of the real, as evident of Wirths’ paintings. Extend the shutter time on a camera and you might get the same effect of simultaneous movement and stillness. Yet, in the artist’s painting process, there are no cameras nor kaleidoscopes. Naming the objects, he studies “the raw architecture for the painting,” Wirths does not know where the image will end when he begins. In a slow process of negotiation between realism and wonder, the object on the paintings become increasingly independent.

Comparing the process to the making of music, the objects are Wirths’ scores. His instruments are paint, brushes, and canvasses. Tennis shoes bend from wear and tear. A tape dispenser sat on an electric blue background. The mathematical precision renders his works compositions; in the moment they become melody and rhythm. Some translate to the eye as a subtle crescendo of lines, and others like symphonies of reflections. Running parallel to the likes of jazz, his works mirror the logic of skillful improvisation. This is the mastery of René Wirths: taking objects we know, and having us experience them anew.

René Wirths has lived in Berlin since 1970. He studied art at the Berlin University of the Arts (1992-1998), and in the final stage of his studies he was in the master class of Wolfgang Petrick. Exhibitions by René Wirths have been shown in Berlin, Zurich, Paris, Prague, Brussels, Seoul and Rotterdam, among others.