DIETMAR BRIXY

(...) Brixy works in the tradition of artist-entrepreneurs, who always also understood themselves as creators of worlds in keeping with a metaphorical analogy to the God of Creation, which has existed since the Renaissance: the mover and defi ner of the self. As a painter, Brixy is the lord of the aesthetic manor. He has mastered the apparatuses and the historical codes of the medium. This makes it possible for him to live the bearable lightness...

(...) Brixy works in the tradition of artist-entrepreneurs, who always also understood themselves as creators of worlds in keeping with a metaphorical analogy to the God of Creation, which has existed since the Renaissance: the mover and defi ner of the self. As a painter, Brixy is the lord of the aesthetic manor. He has mastered the apparatuses and the historical codes of the medium. This makes it possible for him to live the bearable lightness of being as an artist.

His paintings prove to be windows not on the world, but on other paintings and the paintings of others. They develop meta-orders of the observation of painting and of the history of painting. Like microscopes, they show selected details up close or at a distance; they combine fragments, painting methods, and materials, and they observe physical principles and mechanical effects. Brixy piles layer after layer of paint matter one on top of the other, partially exposes them again, wipes and scratches, works with paintbrushes, scrapers and hands, presses fig leaves and palm fronds into the pastose masses, and leaves physical traces using combs, squeegees, and fingers. (...)

Dr. Ulrike Lorenz, director of Kunsthalle Mannheim