Opening: Saturday, 11. January 2025, 11am – 7pm within the winter tour  of the SpinnereiGalleries

 

They seem withdrawn from the present, in their sense of playfulness; and yet despite this, his paintings are imbued with a peculiarly Saxon air of resolute singularity. Gernegroß is how he is. He will not be co-opted. He paints as if there was no future, only history. With delightful subtlety he primes his works as interferences to what is considered commonly accepted. His art is defined by what makes it different. The past is not a haunting presence to him. The old does not need to be cast aside in order to build something new. On the contrary: he demystifies the old, revises it and brings it back to light. His ingenuity allows him to recognise and redefine visual structures in the outdated that parallel the contemporary moment.
Art is transformation, not restoration – the motto is metamorphosis. Falk Gernegroß has studied the masters of the Renaissance and later eras in order to “to learn, to continue, to complete” their works, which means a conscious choice on his part to work in a constructive and reflective mode when reimagining his models. His delight in tending the field of art history is impressive. He approaches his models with a certain distance; however this is never entirely altruistic.
Contemporary art does not exactly have a low count of iconoclasts. Gernegroß tends to side with the admirers. And yet he still has his mischievous way with his models and the common discourses. In a time of declining certainties and secure facts he takes the stand of a traditionalist, albeit with a sense of humor. Know-it-alls can try and proclaim that the tradition of the Leipzig School, with its objective-figurative core, has arrived at an impasse; Gernegroß will not be deterred from joyfully continuing to paint. (Christoph Tannert)

 

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