Axel Getz

Ode to Giotto, Oil Painting with Blue Background an Gold and Orange Stars

2024

Axel Getz is a New York City-based visual artist recognized for compelling abstract works characterized by heavy impasto and richly textured surfaces. Working primarily in oil paint and often incorporating mixed media such as gold leaf, his process-driven practice investigates themes of transformation, materiality, perception, and the paradoxical beauty found within systems in flux. With over a decade of experience, Getz has exhibited in group and solo shows internationally and across the United States, including New York City, Seoul, Martha’s Vineyard, and Palm Beach.

Central to Getz's work is an exploration of environmental and historical undercurrents. He confronts the unsettling aesthetics of ecological imbalance, drawing inspiration from phenomena like the atmospheric intensity of pollution-altered sunsets or the hypnotic, unnatural spread of algae blooms. The tactile, almost sculptural quality of his paint application becomes intrinsic to the subject, mirroring dense organic matter or atmospheric particulates, thereby translating commentary into a visceral, material encounter.

Alongside these environmental concerns, Getz engages with the transcendent, the cosmic, and the sacred. His significant "Illuminated Surfaces" series references diverse influences, from the perceptual depth of the Light and Space movement to the celestial mapping of Giotto's frescoes and the devotional intensity of Byzantine icons. Here, gold leaf is employed not just for its historical resonance with the divine but as an active element exploring light, value, and impermanence.

This deep engagement with visible and invisible forces extends to Getz's examination of queer nostalgia and the fractured transmission of LGBTQ+ histories. Viewing his practice as an act of "excavation" and "mapping the unrecorded," he draws parallels between the ephemeral traces found in obscured archives or personal memory and the shifting, vulnerable states observed in the natural world. His process, which embraces unpredictability, mirrors the inherent instability and resilience found in both ecosystems and marginalized narratives.

Through meticulous technique and layered conceptual inquiries, Axel Getz creates materially dynamic and deeply contemplative artworks. His paintings invite viewers to engage with the shifting surfaces of abstraction, finding resonance between the transformations of nature, the weight of history, and the complexities of contemporary perception.