
Manuel Stehli
oh so slowly
Project Info
- 💙 Schierke Seinecke Gallery
- 💚 Schierke Seinecke Gallery
- 🖤 Manuel Stehli
- 💜 Daniel Schierke
- 💛 Frank Blümler
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Galerie Schierke Seinecke is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition of the painter Manuel Stehli (*1988, Zurich, Switzerland). Since the founding of the gallery in 2015, his work has been shown continuously. Most recently, he has presented artworks in Zurich, Paris, Berlin and Taipei. For the Frankfurt exhibition "oh so slowly", works have been created that open a new chapter within his already extensive œuvre. Night has fallen, bathing his paintings in dark, warm earth tones. The figures move closer together and a peculiar intimacy emerges between them. This also pervades the landscape paintings, which are an echo chamber to the figurative works.
The title of the exhibition "oh so slowly" can be understood in many different ways. The phrase can mean a complaint that something is not moving fast enough. But it can also express an astonishment that something can proceed particularly slowly. The speed is slowed down and suddenly new things and contexts come into view.
The landscapes ("Untitled. Hills at Night") are to be seen against this background. At first glance, they seem impenetrable and almost identical. The eye must first get used to the darkness. In time, in the juxtaposition and comparative viewing, one notices the subtle differences regarding the evening light and the landscape components. Stehli's night paintings have evolved from his earlier Ring Walls, which have appeared regularly in his work over the past few years, representing a mixture of desert and buried architecture. In rendering the nocturnal landscapes, Stehli took his cue from the uncertainty that haunts one when roaming a nocturnal scene and not knowing if what one is seeing is real.
The landscapes hardly reveal anything and, as Stehli puts it, "retreat into color." In this they are similar to his new figure paintings, which are also set in the night. Especially in the works in which almost exclusively the heads are shown, this being-for-itself becomes clear. After a long time, the painter has again resorted to smaller formats for his figures in order to examine certain parts more closely. For a long time he was occupied with the hands of his figures. Now it is above all the faces that have aroused his painterly interest.
By zooming in, they do not automatically become more concrete. In part, sexual characteristics remain vague, they have something mask-like and one is never sure whether the eyes are open or closed. The artist was primarily concerned with the positioning of the heads and bodies and the accompanying questions: who is turning towards or away from whom, how are they related to each other, and in what situation are they? Stehli calls this new open series "intimate talk." The characters are in intimate conversations and seem to exchange familiar things. They become almost too close, as if they are merging.
Stehli is a painter of reduction. In his works, he explores the question of how much one can reduce a figurative image and still create a recognizable and identifiable situation. This reduction goes hand in hand with an openness to projections and associations of the viewer. Darkening the spaces is also part of his repertoire of "less." As a result, the graphic components stand out, as does the use of color. The figures appear altogether in a brighter light and gain presence and intensity. Painters such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio have already lent their paintings an irresistible tension through the strong contrast of light and darkness. Stehlis releases his figures into the night and it is fascinating to see how the atmosphere of his paintings changes as a result.
Daniel Schierke