MICHAEL CONRADS

Michael Conrads (b. 1977) approaches painting with a pronounced sensitivity to structure, colour and rhythm. His compositions, whether abstract or figurative, balance carefully between order and mild disruption. Lines, grids, perspectival floors and geometric forms create a precise, almost architectural palimpsest. Most of his works reflect on pictorial construction—on the exchange between inner worlds, memories and the collective archive of images, whether the flowers of a Dutch master or the stickers from a teenager’s bedroom wall. In The Haunted Artist (2025), we face a studio scene illuminated by the cool light of the moon. At its centre, a self-portrait of the artist with the head of a monk vulture, surrounded by objects that drift between art history and invention: a Warhol Campbell’s can repurposed as a brush holder, a dangling light bulb recalling Bacon’s studio. On a deeper level, Conrads’ works can be understood as a continuation of childhood—the motto is playing. Time stops, images are saturated with references; objects hover in an in-between state: much like the castle in Die Burg (2026), they invite speculation about the fragile boundary between imagination and reality.