2007-09-11 - 2007-10-07




Martin C. Herbst (1965. Salzburg) Austrian artist. Herbst’s one-man show in the Gallery is the internationally known painter’s début in Hungary. Since 2003 Herbst has been a regular participant of the US art fair, ArtMiami, and exhibited several one-man shows in Switzerland (Basel), Germany, Spain and Austria. His monumental paintings’ dominant themes are portraits and human figures. The works often have identical composition, laying emphasis on color schemes, unfolding a rich repertoire of facial expressions, the suggestive power of the gaze, and the semantic differences of gestures. Herbst immerses himself in the meticulous observation and recording of personal characteristics, at the same time reflecting on the evanescence of the genre of portraiture: the images are blurred as though they were hastily photographed from a train that just passed by. They are images of memory, the traces of random moments, „frozen”over the picture plane. Herbst applied his idiosyncratic artistic process when creating his works of art. Instead of canvas, he paints his oils directly on his monumental aluminum sheets—so the paintings appear cool, distant, mediated. Herbst turns his artistic curiosity toward distortions that he achieves by means of represenation, for instance, the experimentation with hollow and convex surfaces. Last spring, visitors of Várfok Gallery had the chance to observe two of Herbst’s aluminum-based sculpture paintings at his show entitled real-unreal. This time, the interested visitor can enjoy in Herbst’s new gigantic, hollow aluminum disc portrait.

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Várfok Gallery
Várfok u. 14
1012 Budapest
Hungary
TEL : +36 1 213 5155
galeria@varfok-galeria.hu
www.varfok-galeria.hu