Hubert Scheibl

[...]  Hubert Scheibl is one of the most important and significant representatives of abstractsensitive, gesture-intense painting amongst mid-generation Austrian artists, as well as being an assiduous draughtsman and photographer. This will be his first major exhibition of large format watercolors and drawings on paper in Paris; he has had many gallery and museum exhibitions in Austria, Italy and the United States during the last two decades.

Scheiblʼs work both on paper and canvas is difficult to categorize. Sublime, fathomless, overwhelming and sensual, are some of the adjectives used to describe the practice. In this exhibition the drawings depict a web of black lines, a spontaneous setting of symbols and signs, spotted with colored strokes and dots. As noted by Christine Buci-Glucksmann, they come “...with their fragile curves, their jumbles of lines à la Pollock, and their simplicity that is at once childlike and cosmic.” The lush, sensuous and nervous elements of Scheiblʼs paper works reveal the speed and immediacy of their graphical gesture.

We will also be displaying two large-format paintings of superimposed layers of color, with visible traces left by the scratching of the palette knife. The timeless aspect of Hubert Scheiblʼs paintings derive from his remarkable skill at capturing the inner light behind the picture plane which creates a sense of deep space; it is here that the viewer is drawn, into a matrix of gesture and color unwittingly. Scheibl provides this sense of emotional freefall as the painting defines its own sense of time and place. The works on paper do the same, in a subtle and transparent way.[...]

Extrait du Communiqué de Presse de l'exposition "Committed to Memory" (24/11/2009 - 02/01/2010) - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (Paris, France)