2023 - 09 - 06, Painting

CUTTING Thomas Kemper's works on paper play out complex relationship possibilities that integrate almost diametrically opposed phenomena into a diverse context that nevertheless retains their uniqueness. In these works, constructed from fragments, there is a lively, pleasurable and constantly renegotiated coexistence of autonomy and involvement, calm and movement, striving apart and cohesion. The painting opens up a wide field of associative memories of architecture, nature or underwater landscapes without inventing anything. But it is precisely in this that it unfolds a splendor of forms and colors that appears mysterious and unknown, that is to be discovered, and whose shape constantly changes in the act of observation and always appears different. This reveals the fragmentary nature of looking and an inkling of the incomprehensible abundance and boundlessness of the world. Sabine Elsa Müller 2022 PRESENTLY Thomas Kemper's works also prove to be visually exceedingly intricate. Most striking is the constant rhythmic alternation between monochrome surfaces and sections that suggest openness, dynamism, and spatiality. With their contrasts and the play of continuity and discontinuity of colors and forms, they create a confusing pictorial spatiality that jumps back and forth, setting the viewer's gaze in unfinishable motion. His works, which are made with oil paint and alkyd and also involve cutting up and recomposition. The extremely precise arrangement of the cut fragments, from which his irregular works are built up, pushing in all directions at once, bursting the traditional rectangular picture format, catches the eye. Peter Lodermeyer 2022