Site © Ryan Daffurn (Oil on linen)
Daffurn and Sagrera hold their breath in the space that widens in their paintings. Daffurn’s paintings mutate and multiply as if from within—as if themselves living creatures—with sinewy, bulbous forms expanding by his own imaginative logic, according to his alert response to the physical world. Sagrera’s paintings echo with an eerie stillness, the flat but pocked surfaces jutting abrasively into each other as he focuses on the straight lines that fragment his view. But both painters linger in the space they construct, space heavy with the presence of troubled souls, and this ominous space unites them.
Before building a door © Carlos Sagrera (Acrylic on canvas, Caldic Collection)
Sagrera’s souls are departed, only their breath hanging in the recently disrupted air. Though his interiors hold together as convincing representations, they feel torn at the seams: walls align but don’t quite seem fixed, as though they belong to different and disordered moments. We only find traces of our fellow humans in the trails of wear they leave on ageing surfaces, in the weak hope of their return. We try to piece together their stories through the fragments left to us, but the stories are as fractured as the space. It is the inorganic matter that survives and that speaks for us. Our presence is recorded in its stark geometry.
Crowning © Ryan Daffurn (Oil on linen)
We face ourselves torn open in Daffurn’s paintings, stripped of our skin and grating against the rugged earth out of which we emerged. We face our humanity as broken, distorted, inconsequent in his cruel cropping that isolates limbs or removes them. And yet, the human body is the source, the vital organ that galvanises his work. The body pulses with our private hungers and fears; our firm, strong, blood-swollen flesh writhes with the hurt and desire of existence. The very rocks that cradle our mortal forms seem fused with our beating hearts; the rolling earth and monstrous trees seem an extension of our wretched human writhings. We try to shape the earth, we push and pull at it with all our strength, but we must face the fact that we are inseparable from it. That catastrophic realisation is always hanging heavily in the air, the moment ever about to burst.
Painting the bathroom © Carlos Sagrera (Acrylic on canvas, Winter Vandenbrink)
Violent colours accost us, each painter subjecting them to light of very different qualities. Daffurn’s are fierce and augmented, making the very air tingle. His light is strong and coloured with a personality of its own, his shadows reverberating back just as fiercely. Sagrera’s colours are set under a more natural light, showing up the dirt and the gritty surfaces. He turns his sober light on the decay we leave in our wake; the neutral shadows that inhabit grazed walls drench everything in a deep sadness. For each, the light is honestly probed, systematically calculated, and cuts through the air that carves out convincing space.
Whitewash © Ryan Daffurn (Oil on linen)
From opposing positions and with different intent, Sagrera and Daffurn draw us into disquieted spaces heavy with the drama and responsibility and yet the inconsequentiality of human presence.
Double © Carlos Sagrera (Acrylic on canvas)
PROBED LIGHT
DAFFURN / SAGRERA
Vernissage
25.05.2016 | 18:00
KTR Galerie / activeART Showroom
Tschaikowskistr. 21
04105 Leipzig
Ausstellungsdauer:
26.05. – 13.07.2016
immer Freitags 15°°- 19°°
Samstag (28.5. / 18.6. / 9.7.) 14°°-18°°
und nach Vereinbarung: 0341 – 22 30 24 01
