I was wandering around the Piccadilly Circus area and decided to go view the exhibition by Friedrich Kunath. I have never seen his work before, and as a painter myself I thought it might be interesting to look at his different approach to painting both in terms of thoughts and techniques. The room on the ground floor contains his paintings about California sunsets, of average sizes overlaid with markings that resembled an A4 notepad that I interpreted as a break in the sunset so kind of making it unreal, that 'California Dreaming' is not really real.
In one of the paintings there is one cartoonish naked figure sitting on one of the notes that make up the note pad on the paintings; behind it is a dream scape beach which adds irony and humour to the whole picture but in a dark way because the character is hunched and smoking, and making the painting behind it meaningless, not real.
In the exhibition there is none of his work using ordinary objects, the focus is on the paintings that in the downstairs room are surreal with a repetition of cartoonish characters, different animals such as birds, giraffes, dogs to a name a few. The colours of the paintings are very bright, towards kitch, a painted pastiche of bright colours, cartoonish characters, animals, naked humans with a reflection to the past with figures from the past. In one painting there are groups of women resembling the Bronte sisters and workers. In another painting there are references to the 1960's, with group sex in another painting, while the cartoonish characters add humour to the pieces, which range from consciousness or subconsciousness downstairs to unreal dreamscapes upstairs and reminded me of illustrated posters. This is his take on popular culture, album covers from the 1960's.
In the middle of the room is a group of broken up colourful sea otters made out of ceramics and which have human feet and arms, these elements are used to destabilise the complacent way of viewing of the audience.
His works are a combination of drawings, painting, ceramics like a collage. The title of exhibition is 'I am running out of world' which has a negative connotation as he is implying that the world doesn't provide enough stimulus for him, that he has done everything, what else is there to explore in arts and his personal life; possibly that all has become a bit meaningless or that he no longer finds that the world is big enough for him especially the images downstairs which are full of characters, thoughts like there is so much of it that it takes the image off the edge and you are left with nothing, like a saturation of images and behind the happy smiley cartoonish figures really there is cynicism.
While the paintings in the room upstairs have a central focal point, the paintings in the room below don't; they are more like a collage apart from one painting. I hope he is seeing a therapist as he is undermining all the good things in life, from the sunsets, to the creative process in his work & not in a distant analytical way but in a personal way which is worrying; the sunsets and the smiles are there but behind them is real darkness, he is undermining the power of the creative process and everything else positive that comes with it. I hope that working this through his work is theraputic for him. But the dark side of his work reminds me that I find that many galleries in London seem to prefer such works over more positive, life-affirming creations which maybe they consider to be more superficial. There is a tendency of some contemporary art galleries to consider dark as cool. There should be room for more balanced displays.
After viewing the exhibition I decided to take the lift... don't know why because it was only one floor to go up and guess what? I got stuck in the lift. I just couldn't believe it! the receptionist was able to open the door and was very apologetic anyway I thought the incident was funny was glad to be out thought.
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