Nachsaison - Eric Keller. Malerei

About

Off-Season is the title of the second solo exhibition of the painter Eric Keller at Galerie Poll. The works, created in 2019 and 2020, show motorway service areas or car parks, railway crossings, interiors, or stages – mostly deserted.

The images, however, are not depictions of the places they represent. Rather, with his paintings Keller attempts to capture moments and moods, experiences and memories. To do so, he usually works from memory, sometimes from drawings or sketches, but never from photographs. He presents individual motifs framed in different ways, or in different perspectives. The motifs are as matter-of-fact as the titles he gives the paintings: Railway Crossing, Interior with Stool, Stage with Planets, or Plateau with TV Tower.

Keller’s paintings are characterised by a muted colour palette with shades of grey, blue, violet, or ochre. For these works in oil glaze, he has chosen to paint on wood – a material that offers him resistance as he reworks his motifs in so many ways. Time is an important factor in the development of Eric Keller’s works, several of which are usually being realised at the same time in the studio. His technique of overpainting, and of removing paint, means that a work goes through many states before Keller declares it to be finished. He succeeds with his painting in opening up meditative, restful spaces for the viewer. At times, the images emanate a deep melancholy.

Eric Keller, born in 1985 in Grimma, completed his master's degree in 2018 with Prof. Annette Schröter at the Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) in Leipzig. Before that, he studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste) in Nuremberg with Rolf-Gunter Dienst and, from 2008 to 2014, painting with Elke Hopfe and Ralf Kerbach at the Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste) in Dresden. Works by Eric Keller can be found in the Galerie Neue Meister of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and in the collection of the Ostsächsische Sparkasse. Eric Keller lives and works in Dresden.