SALZBURG.- Florian Donnerstag’s artistic practice can be described as an ongoing investigation into the productive friction where digital image logic and analog paint application inextricably intertwine. In his solo exhibition Free Pillows, this search manifests in pictorial spaces that are neither purely figurative nor entirely abstract. The title itself serves as a conceptual placeholder for states of rest and security, which, in the reality of the images, consistently prove to be deceptive.

Donnerstag’s work expresses an aesthetic hybridity that views media as technical, social, and aesthetic apparatuses within an open process. Through an iterative and cyclic dynamic, fragments are digitally manipulated, printed on canvas, reworked with painterly gestures, and fed back into the digital loop. In this play of reproduction and varying speeds of application, the boundaries between original and copy become indistinguishable. The paintings function like loose pages of a book—an open sequence that preserves the process of becoming rather than seeking a final conclusion.

A striking feature of this "abstract realism" is the absence of semantic hierarchies. A human face, a technical grid, or a textile structure appear as equivalent units within the composition. This visual leveling evades iconographic expectations and points toward a post-symbolic understanding of the image: meaning is not defined by the artist but arises through the projection of the viewer. The door to the pictorial space stands wide open, yet what reveals itself remains fragmentary, fleeting, and in a state of constant, process-driven shift.

Florian Donnerstag (born 1990 in Salzburg, lives and works in Munich and Mondsee) completed his architecture degree in Innsbruck before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich under Prof. Markus Oehlen. He was appointed Meisterschüler in 2023 and furthered his practice in the class of Prof. Andreas Breunig. He graduated with a Diploma in February 2024.