Vincent Kriste – «Acrylsofa»

At the beginning of every artistic work by Vincent Kriste is the question of the painterly realisation of his motifs. It is neither in his interest to reproduce the objects shown as faithfully as possible nor to obscure them by abstracting them. Rather, the relationship between the specific possibilities of a technique and the associations that can be evoked by it arouses the artist’s attention. In order to emphasise the different materiality of the various motifs, Kriste’s painterly realisations aim on the one hand at a realistically exaggerated representation of the respective materiality of the motifs, and on the other hand at a focus on the materiality of the paint and the way it is applied. In doing so, he never loses sight of the content-related and formal characteristics of the motif and thus creates the pictorial structures and pictorial hierarchies that are typical for him. Kriste accurately segments his most recent paintings into individual components that stand alone and contrast with each other. Only through their embedding and location on the canvas can a mutual reference and at the same time a contribution to the overall picture be discerned. The components do not give up their independence, because the overall conception of the picture allows Kriste to create a simultaneity of realistic image and strongly abstracted moments in the picture.

 – Andreas Mattle