SHOT#ONE (JUST VIBIN’…XOXOXO)

Every painting hanging in the gallery gives away a feeling of being watched – of not being the only one that is actually observing. It is this confrontation with the canvas, which is permanent and inevitable in Felix Schröder’s work. The work’s gaze becomes inevitable, almost kitschy, hovering from underneath a collection of images, strokes and stitches. To show in contemporary painting what one’s immediate environment can look like on one canvas alone must be a staggering task: There is the unlimited abundance of individual relevance; the overwhelming impenetrability of the surfaces that confront the observer with their most recent environment. Felix Schröder has dealt intensively with the entirety of what he regards as remarkable in his environment, as archivable. This momentary registry has become a lot, too much for the width of the canvas, which is why the artist's research goes into the depths of each painting’s foundation. It is these layers on which Schröder's gestural strokes spreads. His ductus superimposes and at the same time sorts the masses: computer-generated faces, blurry references to works of art and architectural notes, monstera-flowers with watermarks on it. All references are torn open, the canvas ripped apart at times, sewn back together. This marbled whole blurs into a hazy fragment of what the human eye is trying to capture momentarily today. In his practice, Felix Schröder combines painting, screenprinting and various interferences on canvas, merging his archives of the everyday. He recycles and prints open-source materials, sometimes leaving a painterly track, however influencing the process by sewing on parts of the canvas beforehand to give it an unevenness or placing screens and objects on it to interfere with the printing proceedings. This multilayering format, which is one focus of his work, reveils the unclear process of references, understandings and mediations in his production. The stunted paintings ultimately ask questions on contemporary authorship, satueting the end of the private space.