SOLARIS GALLERY 2005

THE WHITE SERIES EXHIBITION

PAINTINGS
BY HERMANN LEDERLE

NOW YOU SEE IT

Solaris Gallery
April 30, 2005

Solaris Gallery will debut 'Now You See It', a solo exhibition for admired LA-based German artist Hermann Lederle. Comprised of new paintings, the 'Silence' or white series paintings, 'Now You See It' conjures a reality of transcending portraits and faint figures in a near white-out brilliant universe where subject and form disintegrate in a visual grandeur, in essence would be as appropriate to call it 'Now You Don’t [See It]'.

SILENCE NO.3, OIL ON CANVAS, 60 BY 66 INCHES, 2004

Known for his 'Pixel' painting of abstract simulated portraits, Lederle directs his choice of subject matter towards an ethereal depiction of anthropomorphic items. He is a master of obfuscation, painting layer upon layer of oil paint incorporated with coldwax medium over a gold leaf grid, forcing himself and the viewer into an emotionally charged process of discovery. “I paint to find what I am looking for”, says Lederle, “photography is a moment captured in time, my paintings work in an opposite way – as revelations – sometimes they reveal something that was there all along, and sometimes you see in them something brand new, and in seeing what is new, something else entirely comes through, a fossil buried and exposed through the various layers. In my paintings you can feel the sense of my life.”

In his white paintings, Lederle continues to deal with the figure, liberating and imprisoning it simultaneously, and then sending it into dynamic, turbulent motion through the introduction of circular layers atop the gold-leaf grid, playing background against foreground in a perpetual tug-of-war with the eye of the viewer. His paintings shift and transform with fluctuations in the light, and the hidden figures, fighting for air, for space, for dominance -- a pentimento – forgotten images, surfaces, feelings and music set free as much by what Lederle leaves out as by what consciously has placed there. “If you really abstract a shape so much”, says Lederle, “the imagination of the viewer does the work. I don’t want to impose a message on my paintings. I see them as a catalyst. The images I want you to see in what I do are your own.”

BY DANIELLE SHANG