Thomas Scheibitz

Realism is merely a point of departure for Thomas Scheibitz who in Funny Game I oscillates between form and abstraction with a layered interplay of bold colours and angular structures. Inhabiting a dreamlike space between the recognizable and the imagined, Scheibitz here evokes the speed and complexity of contemporary culture through the ethereal washes of paint which both veil and nurture the depth of the image.

Using paint as a means of visual compression, Scheibitz dismantles the fabric of existence into compartmentalized units of overlapping colour. Hailing from the Leipzig Academy, Scheibitz’s work reaffirms the validity of oil painting as a pertinent medium with which to communicate the transience and complexity of contemporary experience. Scheibitz here blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture to create a fusion between reality and utopic idealism. Breaking down the image in a manner that is at once representational and transcendent; insinuating, but never revealing too much, with its spaces within spaces and myriad of geometric shapes, colours and multi media images, the painterly complexity of the surface captivates the eye and yet does not permit the viewer to enter in.

The streaky fluidity of Scheibitz brushwork here echoes the organic flux of the image which revels in the tension of illusion versus representation. Delighting in the malleability and viscosity of the oils to sculpt and differentiate form, Scheibitz’s work fuses elements of the figurative, cubist and colourist traditions with the compositional pixilation of the virtual reality fed to us through the digitally enhanced images of advertising and media.