HERBERT BRANDL Tao+

The mountain is one of Herbert Brandl’s most significant motifs. He skillfully alternates between abstraction and realism and is able to surprise it with ever new variations of this topos charged with attributions.

With a reduced, carefully chosen palette of colours, the artist creates fascinating, atmospherically condensed mountain motifs, reminiscent of French painters of the 1950s such as Pierre Soulage and Simon Hantaї. His confrontation with Far Eastern painting dicourses and -practices becomes visible in his gestural brush traces, which unfold powerfully on the handmade paper.

The small-format dimensions of the new works on paper create an exciting contrast to the monumental depiction of nature. The mountain is in the center, large-scale and almost cut-out, it fills the picture and seems to extend far beyond its edge in a large gesture. It is a deeply felt perception of nature that eludes you in its entirety and cannot be grasped. While Brandl deconstructs his motifs he simultaneously constructs poetic ideals of Nature unspoilt, deserted and intact.