Henning Kles

My painting basically describes the relationship between man, body and society, between inner and outer reality. However, it emerges very much from the artistic practice in the studio, which has the consequence that doors open in the work process, of which I did not even know in advance that they are there at all. These doors lead to byways, detours, sometimes dead ends, and can lead to unexpected, unseen results. Although the creative process is comparatively intuitive and less planned, there is nonetheless a conceptual parenthesis underlying the resulting series of images. Each series of works picks up on a particular painting genre that is firmly rooted in art history. Be it portrait painting, in particular the design of the human face. More precisely, a modernized, more abstract version of the Tronje (ndl. for 'head', 'face' or 'facial expression'), a pictorial genre of representational painting in which portrait-like head and character studies of anonymous persons with interesting physiognomy are depicted, such as in the picture series "ES" or "RRGGBB". Or the still life, which underlies the series "HYBRDS", "EUMENES" and "FLEX". These works address the formal deconstruction of figuration and refer to the postmodern design of the 80s, where the integration of elementary forms such as circle, triangle and rectangle created iconographic designs that broke with the prevailing doctrines of "Form Follows Function" or "less is more". Similar to the "Portraits", objects are shifted, fragmented, overlapped or distorted to create new perspectives and meanings on themes such as transience, identity, consumer culture or the fragility of reality. Very recently, the field of landscape painting has been added (not yet in the portfolio), in which, despite all the beauty, social, political or ecological themes can also be negotiated.

Each of the genres mentioned here has its own conventions, techniques and meanings, which have been further developed over time. In this field of tension between past and present, tradition and innovation, to transcend the boundaries of traditional representation and explore new possibilities of visual communication is my stimulus in the studio: to open up new levels of meaning through the dissolution of conventional structures and thus to fuel the dialogue between me, the work and the viewers.