Painter Stephan Melzl Packs a Lot of Surreal Superhero Imagery Into Tiny Canvases at This Basel Gallery Show—See It Here

As galleries around the world begin to slowly reopen, we are
focusing on exhibitions at spaces that are now receiving
public visitors. Check out this show at a newly reopened gallery
below.

“Stephan Melzl: Helden, Grundanstrich”
Nicolas Krupp Gallery, Basel

What the gallery says: “Melzl’s paintings
had their genesis in a particular situation in the history of art.
By the mid-1990s, the traditional idea of painting as an authentic
artistic form was finally outdated. People had become mistrustful
of the medium that had been considered the authoritative genre for
centuries and it required a certain courage to start seriously
devoting one’s attentions to it again. Melzl belongs to that
generation of artists—at the time, between 30 and 40—who helped
painting to once again become the subject of the current discourse
on art, but this time with a changed self-image.

For Melzl, illusions are definitely tempting places of refuge,
but also dangerous ones. Because when illusions are confused with
actual experience, they prevent an unimpeded view of reality. By
contrast, a disillusioned view of the world can no longer
disappoint, it strengthens and protects. The pictorial world of
Stephan Melzl is thus not only concerned with ambivalent motifs.
Rather, its concern is extending and focusing the viewer’s gaze,
which is directed at the scenarios staged by the artist. This gaze
allows for all kinds of unbiased associations. Rejecting aesthetic
and moral codices, it is liberating and a humorous relief.”

Why it’s worth a look: Stephan Melzl might
be working on a small scale, but he packs a lot into each canvas.
In his new show at Basel-based gallery Nicolas Krupp, paintings are
hung at eye level, each containing a surreal world filled with
characters straddling the banal and the supernatural. The
show’s title, “Helden, Grundanstrich,” loosely translated
to “Heroes, First Coat,” implies that the figures populating the
images are only loosely sketched as heroes; they are rough drafts,
the first coat on which the work will build.

Many of the figures actually hold paintbrushes, as if they are
painting the layers of one other until the story is complete. In
the titular piece, a group of figures stand at attention like
soldiers wearing matching trooper hats as Batman’s logo glows
behind them in the night sky. In front of them, a woman holding a
paint can with the Superman logo on it stops mid-stroke, taking a
break from her work. It’s as if the painter awoke in the middle of
a dream and allowed you to step inside his mind as the rendered he
scene on the canvas.

What it looks like:

The post Painter Stephan Melzl Packs a Lot of Surreal
Superhero Imagery Into Tiny Canvases at This Basel Gallery Show—See
It Here appeared first on artnet News.