Still Life - Paperback

by Austin Eddy (Author), Matthia Löbke (Author)

In his painting, Austin Eddy formulates contradictions; he draws on the traditions of classical modernism, exploring the balance between figuration and abstraction. The main motifs in his works are birds, fish, and flowers. These figurative elements unfurl into still lifes, landscapes, and cityscapes. Painted in bold colors and modulated using various textures of paint application, the pictorial elements appear in a perspectival coexistence, in a network of lines and surfaces, thereby forming a complex structure of spatial overlays. Similar pictorial motifs reappear repeatedly in different formations, colors, and compositions. This serial approach and the abstract nature of the motifs initially contradict the notion of a living, grow- ing and expressive depiction of nature. The artist is actually less concerned with a spontaneous manifestation of an affinity with nature, but rather with an examination of the way in which nature is conveyed in art. This context is further indicated by the title of the exhibition: Still Life - a still image, still alive - captured in an atmospheric oeuvre of vibrant colors, vivid border motifs, abstract planes of light.

Author Biography

Austin Eddy (*1986, Boston/Mass.), after graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago in 2009, he spent several years living and working in Chicago before moving to New York City. And since 2018 Austin Eddy has been reevaluating the dwindling conversations of modern painting in a world juxtaposed somewhere between abstraction and reality. Eddy's evocative works playfully use brilliant colors, layered textures, vibrant bird motifs, and abstract planes of light, whilst all the while investigating loss and the fleeting passage of time that is the human condition. Matthia Lö bke (*1963) is an artistic director of the Kunstverein Heilbronn, is curator and publishes monographic catalogs, among others about Georg Baselitz, Martin Creed, Gü nther Fö rg, Georg Herold, Markus Lü pertz, Olaf Metzel, Anselm Reyle, Michael Schmidt, Michael Venezia, and Silke Wagner. In Cologne at the late 1980s she was an assistant to Donald Judd and gained her doctorate on Dan Flavin.