Friedrich Kunath: Where is the Madness that You Promised Me

About

Kunath is a multidisciplinary artist – painter, draftsman and sculptor – who draws his dynamism and inspiration sources from the contemporary world. His multifaceted, incongruous and diverse works are all encompassing citations, collages, recycling and references. Conceptual art, German romanticism and Symbolism permeate Kunath’s artistry and he frequently references popular culture – song titles are a particular favourite – together with lyrics and books. Kunath's life feeds into and even, at times, blurs with his work. The images build upon themselves in a layered stream of consciousness driven by the autobiographical, the conceptual and the emotional. Here, elements individually familiar, in unison, now propose a kaleidoscopic view of reality.

Born in East Germany and now based in Los Angeles, there is always a slight tension between the work's lovelorn emotional content and the artist's dead-eye take on the good life in the West. Evoking everything from iconic European design to German Romanticism and Hollywood kitsch, Kunath's paintings are an integration of the unconscious and the artist’s overlapping awareness of himself and the world. They begin with a complete reset of intent, open to automatism and collections of banal everyday looping thoughts. The primal intuition is meaningless but then the painting creates itself when it becomes infected with a romantic projection. Layers of reactionary forms of collective consciousness (books, music, art) collide on the surface. Occasionally the subconscious thoughts reappear, seeming to float atop the painting. Yet still the foundation is visible: a vulnerable rawness cracking through.

Kunath has a variety of drawing styles which are layered onto colourful watercolour washes, often accompanied by handwritten text, cartoons and doodles. Throughout, he explores themes of love, hope, despair and vulnerability that are infused with tragicomic pathos and dreams of possibilities.In recent years, sunsets have become a recurring theme in his slick airbrushed canvasses. “Sunsets are a such problematic images, which is part of what drew me to them,” Kunath says in an interview with GQ Magazine. “They're so empty. Sunsets and rainbows. They're the saxophone solos of art. It allows me the opportunity to make them full again. To find a way past the irony and have them become a sincere statement.”