ZURICH.- Galerie Peter Kilchmann is presenting Renaissance Paintings Reloaded, the second solo exhibition by Swiss artist Andy Denzler (*1965, lives and works in Zurich) in the gallery. Denzler's practice draws inspiration from the history of painting, film, photography, fashion, and design, with the human figure remaining at the core of his artistic inquiry. Another central aspect of his work is the exploration of how images are transformed through perception, memory, and the passage of time. In this exhibition, the artist focuses specifically on states of human emotion, the collective memory of image, and the relationship between historical painting and contemporary art. The solo presentation features new large- and medium-format paintings alongside a selection of works on paper.
Renaissance Paintings Reloaded builds upon the artist's first solo exhibition at the gallery in 2023 which he introduced, among other works, his new Spectral Painting series. The Spectral Paintings mark a significant development within Andy Denzler's artistic practice. Whereas his earlier paintings were primarily based on staged photographs and urban scenes, this body of work expands both his visual sources and his painterly approach. The term “Spectral Painting” is deliberately ambiguous. Rather than referring to the scientific meaning of spectral as relating to the spectrum, Denzler employs the term in its English sense of “ghostly,” “phantom-like,” or “ethereal.” In doing so, he evokes images that hover between presence and absence, memory and disappearance. While these works were based on vintage photographs and film stills, the latest generation draws on compositions by renowned Renaissance masters, especially Titian and Tintoretto. It is precisely their treatment of movement, light, and drama that provides Denzler with a rich foundation for reinterpretation. Rather than approaching historical masterpieces as static relics of the past, he understands them as part of a living visual archive that can be continually reinterpreted and generate new meanings in the present. Employing his signature technique of horizontal blurring through thick impasto layers and fluid brushstrokes, Denzler distorts these images, rendering them fragmented and estranged. At the same time, his expressive brushwork and vibrant, highly saturated palette evoke the gestural intensity of American Neo-Expressionism and the European Neue Wilde movement. Through the latter technique, Denzler has expanded his oeuvre that was previously characterized by restrained, earthy and muted tones into a new painterly phase, a direction he continues to pursue in his most recent body of work.
Each painting is created through a multilayered process of research, construction, destruction, revision, and repeated overpainting. Layer by layer, new visual constellations and unexpected pictorial solutions unfold. Denzler often begins with a precise rendering of an image before gradually subjecting it to processes of distortion, allowing it to oscillate between recognizability and dissolution. The traces of this process remain visible on the painted surface, enabling each work to retain and reveal the history of its own making.
In the painting Rescue (After Tintoretto) (2026, 210 x 180 cm) Andy Denzler reconstructed a painting inspired by Tintoretto’s St Mark Rescues a Saracen from Shipwreck (1562-66). Through its stormy movement, theatrical light, and twisting bodies, the painting emphasizes faith, rescue, and spiritual transformation in a moment of extreme danger. In Tintoretto’s time, people faced religious conflict, plague, war, and dangerous sea travel; today we face political instability, climate crisis, migration, war, and technological disruption.
By translating historical paintings into a contemporary visual context, Renaissance Paintings Reloaded demonstrates that the past always remains an active and vital component of contemporary cultural discourse.
Andy Denzler's work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe, the United States, and Asia at both public and private institutions, including the Gwangju Museum of Art, the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, the Ludwig Galerie Schloss Oberhausen, and the Kunsthalle Rostock. In 2018, the Kunstforum Wien devoted a major retrospective to his work. Denzler participated in the 6th Beijing International Art Biennale in 2015 and the 6th Marrakech Biennale in 2016. His works are held in significant public and private collections, including the Denver Art Museum; the MACM, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal; the David Roberts Art Foundation, London; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the MMoMA, Moscow; Museum Würth, Schwäbisch Hall; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; the White Cube Collection, London; and the art collection of Zürcher Kantonalbank.
