COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE: seminal Austrian artist Hubert Schmalix turns 60

Hubert Schmalix, intrepid protagonist of the 'wild youth' art movement, celebrates his 60th birthday. An occasion he chooses to mark with a special exhibition of never-before-seen large format paintings in his hometown of Graz, Austria. To be precise, at Reinisch Contemporary, the gallery of his long-standing friend and early collector, Helmut Reinisch.

With COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE, Schmalix celebrates both a round birthday and a new series of paintings: his 'bamboo paintings' deal with the plant as an epitome of an exotic lifestyle; as an icon of the modern art and design canon. The seeming simplicity of the motif leads the eye of the observer straight to the delicacy of painting itself. Colouring and brush stroke almost entirely absorb the motif, or rather, the narrative content.

COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE encompasses the latest works by the seminal L.A.-based artist, who earned international recognition in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a trailblazer of Austrian contemporary art. Incredible colouring, new visual themes and an insistent variety characterise his current work, in which the influence of his American surroundings meets his asiaphile collector's passion. This passion turns his paintings into fascinating, fragmentary glimpses into the artist's universe.

Curator Günther Holler-Schuster about COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE:

"Everything in the paintings of Hubert Schmalix appears decelerated, diagrammed or simplified, and opens up the concentrated gaze to the act of painting. Through the means of quasi-serial painting – as an added element – he achieves the transformation of the image concept from mimetic to abstract. The nudes, as well as the recently created bamboo paintings, never aim to represent reality. Rather, they are small fragments of the seemingly endless possibilities of image creation."

As in his other motifs, wich range from nudes, houses and Christ figures to interiors and flowers, Schmalix uses the sensuality of colour in his bamboo paintings to create sensations in the mundane, in the non-descript. What bestows his paintings with their unmistakable character is the transformation of a reality we all assume to know, but which does not exist as such.

LOOKING BACK ON 2012

In February 2012, Reinisch Contemporary (re)opened with a Hubert Schmalix exhibition. Ten months later, COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE marks the gallery's tenth exhibition. Reinisch Contemporary's rapid sequence of exhibitions celebrates and supports emerging as well as established, local as well as international talents, while continuously unearthing new, exciting aspects of contemporary art.

EVENT DETAILS

HUBERT SCHMALIX
COLOUR RAIN AT THE BAMBOO GROVE

Wednesday, December 19, 2012, to Saturday, January 19, 2013.

Reinisch Contemporary
Hauptplatz 6, 8010 Graz
Austria

ABOUT REINISCH CONTEMPORARY

More than 25 years ago, Helmut Reinisch began to collect, exhibit and trade contemporary Austrian and international art. Alongside works by promising new talents the collection also includes pieces by artists such as Arnulf Rainer, Hubert Schmalix, Erwin Wurm and Joseph Beuys.
Operating across genre boundaries, Reinisch Contemporary explores ostensibly disparate fields of work and the connections between them. From time to time, fields of resonance between selected pieces ranging from fine arts and sculpture to textiles and photography are brought to light.
Through exhibitions, residencies and cross-disciplinary projects at its locations in central Graz and nearby Kalsdorf Castle, Reinisch Contemporary creates links between artists, collectors, experts and the wider public.