Bayreuth Peter Valentiner calls his paintings "painted spaces" infinitely floating; each colour surface is both object and space.
Born in Denmark, raised in France and studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Tours and Madrid with Alberto Greco, Peter Valentiner lives alternately in Paris, Berlin and Cologne. For the past five years, Valentiner, together with Christine Hahn, has been the director and organiser of his summer academy in Lissingen in the Eiffel. Valentiner's artistic career began in the early 1960s. To date, the renowned artist has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad. With Peter Valentiner, Marianne Meyer opened her gallery at Mosinger Straße 7 in the summer of 1991; he has now returned there.
Meyer calls the artist a "master of colours". "I personally know no painter who is as confident with the matter of colour as he is," says the gallery owner in her introduction. The viewer can only agree. An extensive spectrum of colours awaits the art lover. With his own technique, which Valentiner calls "découpage-report", he transfers various grids onto the picture surface, which is a synthesis of collage and décollage. This working method is dominant in Valentiner's work. At the beginning of his artistic career, Valentiner worked with camouflage nets; he made objects and installations. In the exhibition catalogue you can see some workers of this style. Klerk ne works on paper, also an earlier working method of the artist, can be seen in the back room of the gallery. "Formsystem" made of ribbons and acrylic on canvas is the title Valentiner gives to his mostly large-format labour-intensive works.
The main content of the exhibition is shown in the artist's more recent works. The visual interpenetration of two abstractly painted surfaces (they are created by means of decoupage) in the entrance area of the gallery are an imposing eye-catcher for the viewer. He can see these works either as parts floating in front of a background or as glimpses of the background. And this is precisely what the artist is essentially concerned with in his pictorial content. Valentiner wants to invite the viewer of his paintings to reflect on his feelings about space and colour. Thus one experiences a new irritation each time. In the large red-blue paintings, Valentiner shows an enormous spatiality, produced with two colours. Recently, the artist has also made use of the possibilities of a computer: he enters his picture grids and lets the computer work. In the process, the forms are distorted but remain his own, only altered by the technology These works were created as ink drawings. One may agree with the final sentence of the gallery owner: "We are eagerly awaiting the next exhibition with large paintings resulting from this latest working method".
The exhibition is open until 15 December, Tuesdays to Fridays until 6 pm.
VO.
Comments