David Ostrowski

FORMAT:C, Dusseldorf 

Private Collection, Austria

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Dusseldorf, FORMAT:C, Die Lügnerin – David Ostrowski und Philip Seibel, 2011. n.p., illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. Surface irregularities are consistent with the artist's working method. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Executed on a monumental scale, David Ostrowski’s F (Dann Lieber Nein) is a striking example of the artist’s distinctive use of spray paint. Part of Ostrowski’s celebrated F Series, which playfully parodies art historical tropes, F (Dann Lieber Nein) is the perfect embodiment of this paradigm with its gestural Yves Klein blue marks that streak across the cloudy alabaster ground, evoking elements of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work from the 1980s. A prominent forerunner in a burgeoning group of cutting-edge, process-based painters, Ostrowski's international standing has intensified in recent years with numerous solo exhibitions both in America and Europe, including those at Simon Lee and Peres Projects.  

A student of Albert Oehlen at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, the expressive passages of spray paint in F (Dann Lieber Nein) evoke the performative smudges that populate Ostrowski’s teacher’s oeuvre. Using his formal education as a point of departure, however, Ostrowski’s work engages with the Sisyphean task of de-skilling painting; adding and discarding colour and canvas without regard to strategy or chronology. As the artist explains: “I’m trying to neglect all of my painterly knowledge and ability in order to paint as a right-hander with my right hand as if it were the left one. I place the fast-paced agility of the hand before that of the mind… It’s an on-going struggle to unlearn and rediscover” (David Ostrowski quoted in: Brent Randall, ‘David Ostrowski’, Husk Magazine, 2013, online resource).