MICHAEL VAN OFEN
Michael van Ofen has exhibited internationally including solo shows in the USA, UK, and Japan.
His work is held at several public collections across Germany including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg and Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld.
Nineteenth century paintings are the basis of van Ofen’s works. He deconstructs them into their painterly elements and reassembles them so that a new work, alienated from its roots yet faithful to its matrix occurs. Objects are stripped down to brushstrokes and a single, dominant colour. And the beauty of it is that the spectator’s perception hovers simultaneously on two planes – awareness of the brushstrokes, and perceiving them as representation. Van Ofen has the best of all possible worlds. His work is abstract, but the narrative is not. It is connected with realty, but assumes the reality by means of methods unique to abstraction.
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