OLIVER GRÖNE
WER SCHMETTERLINGE LACHEN HÖRT,
DER WEISS, WIE WOLKEN SCHMECKEN
MAY 25–JUNE 29, 2024
OPENING:
FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2024, 6–9 PM
OLIVER GRÖNE, BIRKENSTÄMME, 2023
Öl auf Leinwand, 220 x 145 CM
Whether heads or still lifes, landscapes or abstract colour spaces - the radical achievements of European art history always are the basis and starting point for Oliver Grönes' painting, which for him is a form of organising space and a search for a visual essence of our world.
For his current exhibition, the Berlin-based artist has chosen a title that may sound puzzling at first glance. Read in its entirety, the quoted song lyrics by Carlo Kages from the 1970s are about values that can be understood as the basis for art today: Openness to the world, fearlessness and the freedom to think, feel, act and create. Kages' homage to Novalis opens up an apt dialog with Oliver Grönes' works across the centuries. Like the early Romantic writer in the 18th century, the painter of the 21st century is not interested in imitation, but rather in exploring the world out of his own artistic freedom and in making inner states and feelings visible.
By questioning and artistically developing existing subjects, approaches and pictorial concepts, Oliver Gröne's paintings constantly offer us new perspectives. Deep pictorial spaces emerge from the dense color fields of his recently created works. Few edges, lines and colors are sufficient to create the impression of a landscape. With ease and confidence, the artist transforms singular brushstrokes into treetops, creating an astonishingly associative atmosphere and sensuality with painterly clarity, reduction and pointedness - even in the abstract. Oliver Gröne always takes the viewer seriously and honestly presents his painterly means to them. He is not interested in the pretended illusion of a specific place or object, but in showing them something essential in order to enable them to locate themselves in the pictorial space they have imagined.
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Oliver Gröne was born in 1969 in Lemgo, North Rhine-Westphalia. After studying graphic design at the FH Bielefeld and gaining his first diploma in painting, he studied fine art under Prof. Hermann Albert at the HBK in Braunschweig from 1994-99. He lives and works in Berlin and Potsdam.