DANIEL SCHLIER

Köpfe, Fratzen, Faxen / Heads, Frats, Facets
28 September – 13 November 2021
opening day: Tuesday, 28 September, 11:00 – 18:00

https://born.gallery/daniel-schlier/heads-frats-shenanigans

Daniel Schlier

1960 born in Alsace, France     

Professorship at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris     

lives and works in Strasbourg and Paris, France   

Daniel Schlier in conversation with painter Michael Anders

Michael Anders: Despite the  eclecticism of your painting – whether reverse glass painting, works on  marble, on canvas – there is a common thread running through your work.  Heads or grimaces appear regularly. Actually, they resemble, glimpsed,  rather distorted images, not in the sense of a caricature, but really  distorted images, deformed, bent heads. As if mankind were monstrous.  You’re painting an image of humanity that seems rather bizarre, but  naturally this perspective has a certain tradition in painting, from  folkloric masks the world over, countless sculptures from the ancient  world, or carnivals and Fasnacht in Germany, portraits from Rembrandt to  Picasso, Nolde, Klee, and many others. I could call up many other  associations, but I would like to ask you to describe this common thread  of your work in more detail: Are they portraits or types? Do you have  an idea, a plan in mind as you begin to work? Or does the painting build  up like a wall, stone by stone? A mystery… Whereby, what also appeals  to me about it, is that it is basically not about abstract figures, time  and again you recognize an eye, a mouth, painted quite accurately, and  even if you do not actually know the models personally, you can feel  that there is an entity.
The works have little in common with, for example, Francis Bacon,  cinematographic, or Picasso, architectural, cubist. I have the feeling  your heads confront their own matter, you paint a skin, a skin painted  with colors, not realism. Like an organism that has the ability to  self-generate. Could you enlighten us about your approach?  

Daniel Schlier: Gladly, that’s quite a long and substantial question… (laughing) and the comparison you dare to make is demanding, but… comparaison n’est pas raison is what they say in French (A comparison is not an explanation)!  One can debate endlessly about the formal sources of the artists –  whether autobiography, culture – skillful, or studied. I am more  interested in the effect of the images, how they act in the mind of the  viewer. How the pictures are made, how they are created, from which  source they spring, is of course of great importance, but remains  additional information. In which way pictures can act, that I find  overwhelming. And that is the essential subject of the works. Sailors  have used the compass for centuries, possibly without being able to  explain factually, scientifically, how it works. But it worked…
I have the impression to be in the same situation. I paint pictures of  which I believe that they must be that way – how they are created is a  separate question…. Painting for me is an exercise in freedom.
 

Excerpt from a conversation between Michael Anders and Daniel Schlier, recorded in summer 2015