Horst Keining

* 1949 in Hattingen (D)

Lives and works in Düsseldorf (D).

Horst Keining began his artistic career in 1970 by studying painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He had previously studied construction engineering in Bonn; this has certainly influenced the artist’s involvement with architecture as part of his oeuvre.

His first solo exhibition took place in 1979 at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster. In 1994, his participation in an artists’ meeting in Slovenia initiated a new creative period: He began reducing three-dimensional architectural structures to two-dimensional, flat compositions. This gave rise to the stripe pictures that ultimately became part of an exhibition at the Heidelberger Kunstverein, where he exhibited works together with his former teacher Erwin Heerich. A period of study in New York provided new impulses so that in 2000, Keining created his series LUKAS which, proceeding from the same-named product palette by the paint manufacturer, rendered the colours worthy of representation. In Keining’s further activities, the combination of image and symbol that had been thereby achieved became a painterly theme serving as a basis for the artist’s repeated investigation of the discrepancy between text and image. His most recent works combine familiar motifs from the advertisements of the 1950s and 1960s with printed textual passages, with distortion of the pictorial motif through choice of colour, enlargement and segmentation.

Horst Keining has exhibited repeatedly at the IKOB, most recently in 2016 in the framework of the presentation MUSEUM = K (x+y) / D.

Horst Keining, A-One

A-One, 2007

Horst Keining, Elektra 10

Elektra 10, 2003

Horst Keining, Les bombes

Les bombes, 2007

Horst Keining, Nach 2-3 Stunden Bremen

Nach 2-3 Stunden Bremen, 2007

Horst Keining, Texte zur Kunst

Texte zur Kunst, 2005

Horst Keining, Was erprobt ist

Was erprobt ist, 2010

Horst Keining, Windows

Windows, 2007