Exhibition

Peter Blum: Fresh German Realism/ Oliver Estavillo: Comedie Humaine

3 Feb 2014 – 1 Mar 2014

Save Event: Peter Blum: Fresh German Realism/ Oliver Estavillo: Comedie Humaine

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London, United Kingdom

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  • Tube: Baker Street, Bond Street, Marble Arch
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About

Hay Hill Gallery will be presenting a double exhibition this February, featuring the established German artists Peter Henryk Blum and Oliver Estavillo. Differing wildly in style, these two shows contrast each other perfectly whilst connecting in theories of what it is to be human. Blum is one of the most exciting German figurative artists of his generation. Using the Old Masters techniques of layer and glaze painting, his scenes are muted, selective with colour, like silent film reels and tinted sepia prints. Players are staged in ironically self-conscious poses where the melancholia of sad harlequins and heavily made up women is reminiscent of physical theatre. Light hearted or darkly surreal, the works are unsettling, stirring up feelings of being at odds with things- even as everything else is odd. Gentle diffusions of light are met by the devilishly sharp details of technical brilliance. The unreality of the real world with its desires, alienation, loneliness and illusion is presented in a deeply lyrical style as Blum steers us away from the rational subjective self into the strength of the collective. The characters are heartbreakingly earnest in their wordless attempts to communicate and these pantomimes verge on the Theatre of the Absurd, much like the Orator's indecipherable speaker in Ionesco's play The Chairs. The meta-theatricality of Blum's work confronts us with the contradictions of humanity. Wearing dark glasses, we long to hide away but to also be adored, to ‘know fully, even as we are fully known'. To reach wholeness, we must look through the masks and costumes, remaining open-hearted with each other. Blum's staging of each character remains strange because it is clear they are not alone in their secret rituals. Struck dumb, there is someone watching in the wings- and that person turns out to be you. Oliver Estavillo has been referred to as Pop-Brueghel" and "The Tarantino of Painting'". His inspiration is taken from everyday life

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