Harald Schmitz-Schmelzer

77 Farben

2011

Artist's Statement: "Around 30 years ago, not long after I had started painting seriously, I was at a one-man exhibition of the great Brice Marden at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art when I visited the annex to get a cocktail. There was one other guy at the small bar table in an otherwise empty room, waiting for his coffee to be handed to him. He turned and dumped half of it down my front. I immediately recognized him as none other than Brice Marden. He apologized profusely, but I stopped him and said: 'No problem: how often is it that Brice Marden dumps coffee on your pants? They're worth more now.' We both had a good laugh. At any rate - I was certainly channeling his early work when I began work on this series. They are made with oil and beeswax on wood panels. While they look Minimalist at first glance, there are subtle shifts in color and texture that distinguish them from hard-edged abstraction. For me, it has always been about the surface, and the materials. Wax has a character unlike anything else. I use wax both hot (encaustic) and in a cold mixture with turpentine, blended with oil. The complementary underpainting, setting the stage for the wax and oil later...

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