HAMBURG.- In his first solo exhibition, recently opened on November 3rd, entitled Brushcleaning Landscapes at the Drawing Room, Mathias Deutsch (* 1967 in Rendsburg) is showing 15 paintings of the same format that he painted in oil on paper between 2020 - 2022. The sheets hang unframed in front of the wall on clamps attached to nails. This purist hanging allows a direct engagement with the surfaces of the individual sheets, which flutter quietly in the wind as they pass through the gallery space.

The exhibition title Brushcleaning Landscapes, which will end on Decedmber 12th, refers to the genesis of the oil paintings in 70 x 50 cm format. Deutsch worked on large-format paintings in oil on canvas and, after the painting process, spread his brushes, which were covered with paint residue, on paper. Looking at these sheets, which were destined for the trash, he noticed with his artistically trained eye that the brushstrokes showed shadowy pictorial motifs of landscapes, birds, fish and technical units.




It seemed as if the motifs were already there and all that was needed was to focus the cut- out, as with a spotlight. Chance played an important role in finding images in this open series of works but would have remained meaningless without Deutsch's imaginary image archive.

In Brushcleaning Landscapes, Deutsch pursues a form of painting that oscillates between figuration and abstraction, non-illustrative and illustrative. He is interested in the painterly problems that arise in the elaboration of the sheets. What is particularly noteworthy is that he lets his landscapes, pinwheels, owls and rays emerge from the colours of the surrounding space. In doing so, he makes use of various materials such as the palette knife or lids as punches and employs artistic techniques such as monotype to add further forms and patterns to the found motifs, thus working out new levels of association.

Mathias Deutsch's Brushcleaning Landscapes can be broadly classified in the principle of aleatorics anchored in art, literature and music - an artistic procedure in which room is given to chance in the creative process, chance is made fruitful - a procedure that was used above all in Dadaism and Surrealism, but also in New Music, for example with John Cage.