Slawomir Elsner
Geraubte Küsse
3 June – 15 July 2023
We are very happy to present the third solo exhibition by Slawomir Elsner (*1976 in Wodzisław Slaski, Poland, lives and works in Berlin) at the gallery. This time Elsner chooses the genres of still life, portrait and figure painting for his colour pencil adaptations after Old Masters. In addition, he hangs three abstract watercolours and now also includes a watercolour depicting a landscape after an Old Master in his pictorial research.
In the first room of his exhibition, he shows all his mastery in creating extraordinary works by reducing the means of representation. A full-length figure of Judith after Giorgione hangs right at the beginning of his presentation. As always, the size of Elsner's paintings corresponds to that of the originals, but what is unusual about the Judith is the reduction of the colours to red, blue and violet. The colour yellow and all its mixed shades of orange, green etc. are not present. This surprising restriction of colour values, which Elsner uses in two other depictions besides the Judith, can be explained by the location of the three originals: all three works are in the painting collection of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, which cannot be visited at present due to the war in Ukraine and the accompanying travel restrictions. In a subtle way, Elsner thematises current world political events in these paintings merely through the colour restriction.
Judith (after Giorgione), 2023, coloured pencil on paper, 144 x 68 cm
Sunflowers in a Vase (after Henri Matisse), 2023, coloured pencil on paper, 46 x 38 cm
The Stolen Kiss (after Jean-Honoré Fragonard and/or Marguerite Gérard), 2023, coloured pencil on paper, 45 x 55 cm
Elsner juxtaposes the colour reduced pictures from St. Petersburg with a counterpart by the same artist, but from a different metropolis, which consequently has the right colours. Exemplary is the juxtaposition of the paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard The Stolen Kiss from the Hermitage with the erotic painting The Swing from the Wallace Collection in London.
The Swing (after Jean-Honoré Fragonard), 2023, coloured pencil on paper, 81 x 64 cm
Flower Piece (after Henri Matisse), 2023, coloured pencil on paper, 55.6 x 46.4 cm
Boy with Arrow (after Giorgione), 2023, coloured pencil on paper, 48 x 41.8 cm
A large-format watercolour in gradations of colour hangs on the short wall. For the first time, a watercolour by Elsner represents an adaptation of an Old Master painting. For the painting Aus der Serie Just Watercolors (113) - Morning in the Mountains, he drew on a landscape painting by Caspar David Friedrich. The original is in the Hermitage and should therefore, according to Elsner's formula, contain no yellow tones and mixtures. However, Elsner began work on the painting before the outbreak of war and had not imposed any colour restrictions on himself at that time. After the war began, he reworked the picture and added blue layers to the almost completed watercolour. By staggering the brightness values, Elsner succeeds particularly well in capturing the advancing dawn in the morning mountains.
From the series Just Watercolors (113), The Morning in the Mountains (In the style of C.D. Friedrich), 2023, watercolour on paper, 135 x 170 cm
From the Series Just Watercolors (117), 2023, watercolour on paper, 146 x 116 cm
From the Series Just Watercolors (64), 2019, watercolour on paper, 53 x 40 cm (20 7/8 x 15 3/4 in.)
From the Series Just Watercolors (108), 2022, watercolour on paper, 140 x 110 cm
In the second room is the sheet Aus der Serie Just Watercolors (108) on which Elsner daringly placed the blue in several layers on top of the yellow and red tones already present. In the sheet Aus der Serie Just Watercolors (117), Elsner painted the sheet with a light blue, dark blue, green, red and yellow band of colour, following from left to right. Then, following from top to bottom, he laid down 57 watercolour layers of green. The result is a symphony in green, a colour that symbolises hope.