Valentiner in the Angelika Bernutz Gallery
Düsseldorf has a new gallery at Kaiserswerther Straße 257. It is run by Angelika Bernutz, who worked for 20 years as an industrial businesswoman, initially as a sideline and since 1983 as a full-time employee, helping her brother Klaus Rinke in his studio. Now she wants to devote herself to younger painters in her own business.
Her debut is with Peter Valentiner, who was born in Copenhagen in 1941, has French nationality, studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Tours and won a prize at the Youth Biennale in Paris in 1971. Since 1980, the painter has commuted between Paris, Berlin and Cologne.
He is not only a border crosser between different art locations, but also styles. He loves to quote colleagues, Gerhard Richter in particular, but also some French friends. But he breaks these allusions, plays with them, alienates them. This happens in various layers and coverings, in brushing over, re-layering, leaving edges and ridges.
One believes one is looking at collages and decollages. The gaze slips into deep painting grounds, lands on islands of May, jumps from colour space to colour space and finds a foothold in a tonality, a dark-light chord, the dialogue between ochre and black tones. Valentiner is a perfect painter. Whether he is possibly too per.fect, only time will tell. (until October).
Helga Meister
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