Adrian Altintas – Solo Show – May – June 2021

Sundays Gallery –  Copenhagen  – Adrian Altintas

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In his exhibition “Boogie Woogie Butterfly” at Sunday-S Gallery, Adrian Altintas expands the concept of painting and sculpture. Through the interplay of open, semi-open, and closed paintings, he creates tensions between these ideas.

Following his previous cut-out paintings, Altintas shows four new works. Elongated, tapered, small bodies are almost rhythmically placed on the plates, applied in an angle partly unseeingly. A subtle shimmering of color suggests that the backs of the small bodies serve as a painting ground. Altintas sees this subtle and playful use of color as a link to Ellsworth Kelly’s, who, similar to Piet Mondrian or Wassily Kandinsky, was not looking for the spiritual in art, but to whom any kind of mystification was alien. Like Kelly, Altintas seeks a relationship between mass and form and not in the masses of the color.

In his cut-outs, he works on plates, into which he cuts and carves, sometimes in a brutal manner. He opens up the body of the picture and paints on the edges of the flesh. He connects the image with the wall behind it, which becomes the essential element of the picture. This spatial reference in the paintings changes the experience of space rather than subordinating itself to it.

The perception of Altintas’ paintings is determined by the interaction of the main components: light, color, and shape. Through big free forms, the breaks with clear geometric shapes, and the application of the small bodies, Altintas’ paintings seem to not hang statically on the wall but float in front of it. One could think that the paintings are in motion; upwards, sideways, or into space.

Adrian Altintas  (*1989) lives and works in Berlin.

Text by – Isabel Coldewey

Link to Q&A with Adrian Altintas at Copenhagen Contemporary