Catalogue ›Figures‹ Andreana Dobreva and Florian Pelka | Lachenmann Art

Catalogue of the duo exhibition of the artists Andreana Dobreva and Florian Pelka ›Figuren‹, which took place from November 10, 2018 to January 18, 2019 at the Lachenmann Art Gallery in Konstanz. Texts by the gallery owner and art historian Juliane Lachenmann.

The Duden dictionary offers a varied range of definition approaches for the term ›figure‹, which at the forefront present the ›body shape‹ and the ›figure‹ and a little later the ›(artistic) representation of a human, animal or abstract body‹, followed somewhat later by the ›game piece‹. ›(geometric) structures made of lines or surfaces‹ are also mentioned, and the term ›person/personality (in their effect on their environment and society‹ is also mentioned and is classified into ›acting person‹ or ›figure in a work of poetry‹ and ›(colloquially) person‹ as well as ›human (usually male), type‹. The term is also differentiated from one another within sport, music and linguistics.

The plural of this term lends this exhibition its title: ›Figures‹. With this linguistic definition and the analytical approach to clarification in mind, the viewer approaches the works of Andreana Dobreva and Florian Pelka with interest and searching. He searches for human and animal images, for creatures; he does not find the smoothed body, but rather representations and images that unfold from the ethereal and appear to emerge from disappearance.

Andreana Dobreva, who lives in Munich, studied fine arts under Prof. Anke Doberauer. In the midst of abstract image elements, the visitor's gaze finds fragmentary bodies and limbs. Inspired by Velazquez, Rembrandt and others, the need for color, form and physicality flickers up and the bodies depicted are modelled out of the paint with intensive brushstrokes. The artist's color palette is multi-colored but muted; it exposes visual habits and turns the protagonists of the small-format portraits into icons. The result is paintings whose compositions tell of permanent movement, of depth and spatiality on two-dimensional canvases. Where people are understood as creatures, the viewer encounters density and materiality, explosions of color and statuesque-looking image elements.

Florian Pelka studied philosophy and literature in Berlin and Paris, as well as fine arts at the UDK Berlin under Georg Baselitz, whose master student he was. The art historical and literary references and quotations that Florian Pelka chooses in many of his works are therefore not surprising. Be it ancient Greek mythology, urban neon advertising or the knightly legends of the Middle Ages. Baroque-looking putti stand next to the would-be shaman and the glittering world of department stores, which is reflected in the happily shining eyes of consumers and which calls today's ideals into question. As if in search of another world, in which it is not about the individual but about cultural memory, the artist is both an explorer and a discoverer. He alienates, deforms and reconstructs, creating fairytale landscapes and scenes.

The physicality and the beauty of the forms – after all, the human figure is the basic motif of our existence – disappear from one consciousness into another, dissolve and yet are part of the unique, artistic act of creation.

To the exhibition ›Figures‹

Discover more works by Andreada Dobreva