exhibitied Works
In his series of large-scale paintings, Timur Lukas depicts the impression of nature from days gone by. The artist’s own childhood memories – as the exhibition title suggests, fuelled by visits to his grandmother – are reduced to a few strong pictorial fragments: Windows, stairs, vases, trees. This subjective and therefore temporally and visually distorted recollection takes place on the canvas as the quintessence of these relics. As a result, sizes and shapes are distorted, but it is precisely this that creates the best possible remembered fiction as a clear certainty. Lukas only ever allows the viewer to guess at the category of real and false memories and their emotional connotations.
Luka’s works radiate with colourful diversity, positively charged, at times intoxicatingly exaggerated nature, brought to the canvas with loose brushstrokes in oil and spray paint and yet to be named in detail, even if not to be misunderstood as documentary: Yarrow, craspedia and poppy. As in earlier works, Timur Lukas continues to concede each colour its own surface, but the layers are staggered, the overpaintings are layered, yet the executed figuration becomes more clearly legible. A fever dream of memory.
Lukas transfers the autobiographically influenced impressions into the real exhibition space of the Kunstverein in the form of white lacquered vases made of plaster and freely modelled in their proportions, as well as an exhibition display. The fragile structures carry dried flower arrangements, the display doubles as a presentation surface and a reminiscence of nature.
Memory is not a fixed, complete representation of the event, but rather a fragmentarily composed image. Mouldable, precisely at the moment of remembering, a universal thought, familiar to both the viewer and the artist. Painting as a window, less a view than an insight, always truth.
Timur Lukas was born in Constance in 1986. He completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich as a master student of Prof Gregor Hildebrandt. He lives and works in Munich.
