CARSTEN FOCK

"IDEALISTS ARE ALWAYS"

12.11.04 - 08.01.05

Jan Winkelmann / Berlin is showing new works by the Berlin-based artist Carsten Fock under the title "Idealists are Always" from 12 November 2004 to 8 January 2005.

Six large-format canvasses document the most recent development in the work of the artist, born 1968. Carsten Fock first came to public attention with his dense and harsh felt-pen drawings. The essential elements of his artistic imagery already encounter each other in these works: text in the form of slogans and literary fragments, a preoccupation with the tradition of painting, repeated use of pictures and images from advertising and film and the sporadic integration of elements of contemporary popular visual culture.

In contrast to the excessive felt-pen works kept in solemn colour, the ephemeral quality of the new works, drawn in pencil on ungrounded canvas, testifies to great restraint. The use of colour is much more sporadic. Fock's characteristic broad, over-painting strokes set a counterweight to his fine, controlled pencil strokes. Alongside the representational content of the pictures, often only insinuated by outlines, the partially painted-over elements and occasional splash-marks initially appear purely coincidental. But on closer observation, one notices that they are no less calculated, just as the bundle of pencil strokes of the drawing beneath them, which often only bear the signs of restraint on the very surface.

Whether ethereal portraits or slogan-like lines of text, logos from the world of consumerism, painted-over statements or citations from the history of art: Fock's reduced representationalism finds its way to formal solutions which, in their severity and also their poetry, represent extremely autonomous statements on the possibilities of painting today.

Carsten Fock's most recent works perform a delicate balance between painting and drawing and are characterised by a rigorous concentration on a small number of pictorial elements. They are the result of a development which undergoes a concentration on just a few formal devices by resolutely "leaving things out", reducing his work to its most essential elements.

The gallery is open from Tuesdays to Saturdays between 11 am and 6 pm.

The gallery will be closed from 23.12.04 to 03.01.05.

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