HORST KEINING

Horst Keining’s new paintings appear as poetically informed views into the display windows of shops or boutiques and present thoughtful insights into the globalized visual culture of everyday life. On the first pictorial level, there is often lettering, sometimes a brand name. On the second level, the promise of the wares comes to expression: patterns and textiles, ornaments that are mostly reproduced in bright colors with a deliberately diffuse manner of painting through application with a spray-gun. The motifs of these pictures frequently come from the world of fashion and consumption. On canvases each measuring 185 by 135 centimeters, they depict consumable articles or their counterfeits along with the appertaining magazine titles such as ELLE, 2009 or VOGUE, 2010. These covers as well are slightly blurred and have a disturbing impact – as if the viewer had strolled through a shopping district on a rainy day.

By painting in a space-encompassing, surface-covering and bleeding-edged manner, Keining creates individual pictures each of which constitutes its own mental space. Through his conceptual approach, however, he also gives rise to an œuvre which, in the collective presentation of its individual pictures, indicates how the world of goods and brands impacts upon our perception and how impalpable the conveyed messages often are. But Keining is someone who handles these messages not only thoughtfully but also playfully; he doesn’t evaluate reality but instead responds to it with a subtle treatment.