Color, Space, Structure



It is the physical appearance of the paint, which lends the paintings by Jochen Schambeck their special impact. Squeezed directly from the tube and smoothed with the fingers straight onto the wooden background it piles up and dries slowly to form creviced raised folds. The painterly technique recalls the sculptor at work as he gradually composes a figure from piece after piece of clay. And not unlike the sculptural process this manner of painting also takes time. It is not satisfied with intuitive application but is composed of waiting and gathering experiences, of the hot moments of impulse and the patience it takes until they cool off. The work has its representational, figurative origins in the 1990s, and for a while tended to focus on catastrophic subjects, but soon turned instead more to the portrayable nature of objects rather than the objects themselves. The scrupulously involved painting process corresponds exactly with the time in which with the color the determination of the color is also given concrete form. As in a symbol of transition, the more recent works from the “Splash Out” series can be read as an opulent palette or as pictures of flowers and plants.

Hans Joachim Müller


(Extract from the catalogue text: Farbe Raum Struktur, Galerie von Braunbehrens, München 2010)