Friedrich Kunath

Tim Van Laere Gallery in Antwerp presents its second solo exhibition of Friedrich Kunath (b. 1974, Chemnitz, Germany, lives and works in Los Angeles), titled New Ballads.      The exhibition presents 16 new paintings including Kunath's largest work to date: a monumental painting of 6 metres long and 2.4 metres high, consisting of three panels.   Kunath’s work is permeated with ambiguity. His personal journey from East to West Berlin, towards his new-found home in Los Angeles presented Kunath with a wide variety of source material ranging from the canon of art history and German philosophy to the idiom of kitsch and the make-believe world of Hollywood and LA. Dealing with the universal themes of human existence, such as love, loss, optimism, vulnerability and melancholy, he serves a variety of media, ranging from painting, sculpture, drawing, video and photography, to expansive installations, all provided with a tragicomic pathos and dreams of possibilities.  Irony and melancholy melt together in a cheerful vocabulary, with a new glorious sunset on the horizon.     His new paintings are an integration of his own unconsciousness and the overlapping awareness of himself and the world. They begin with a complete reset of intent, open to automatism and collections of banal everyday looping thoughts, what Friedrich Kunath refers to as “pictorial Tourette’s”. He presents a variety of drawing styles which are layered onto thick layers of colorful paint, often accompanied by handwritten texts, cartoons and reoccurring motifs.   Kunath's work has been exhibited widely and is featured in prominent public and private collections such as the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.