Alfred Graselli. Monets Gärtner

21.01.2013 - 04.02.2013

vorAnker, Temporary Space for Artists, Wien / Österreich

On the Strip-off-Paintings
Text: Johannes Heuer

In his studies on Claude Monet Alfred Graselli tries an unconventional approach. Instead of following up directly on Monet's work, he concentrates on one of his most important source of inspiration and motives: Monet's garden in Giverny.
This garden is being cared by the gardener Graselli - in his studio, with the means of painting.
He is choreographing the wilderness, influences the natural processes and accompanies the growth, dieback and decomposition.... He dislikes crop orientated domestication. Rags, linen and waste fabric is getting dusty somewhere in corners, are being digged out maybe, serve to dab off excess paint, sometimes gain density, sometimes are being folded, from time to time mounted and quite rarely buried. Tools are brushes and scrapers, other aids are oil, turpentine, wax and colors. The brushstroke is still existent, but hard to find in the intensity of a long lasting preoccupation.
Pictures come into existence, not by their own but somehow. Some seem like details of a higher reality. And they aren't finished, on the contrary: they seem to change constantly, as if they had learned to vegetate during the long time of working on them. Hardly no looking at them without noticing a change and sometimes the surprise of discovering a new picture in the same frame.

[Quelle: http://voranker.org/]