Daniel Lergon [Germany] untitled
paintings
ORION building, Spokojna 2
Painting on fluorescent materials, or with fluorescent paints, is the speciality of an artist whose violent and irreversible gestures, abrasions, spatula or brush movements, are reminiscent of Japanese painting as a form of contemplation and meditation on beauty. We never see the whole figure depicted in the painting, because as the viewer moves, part of it disappears and another unexpectedly emerges.
Daniel Lergon was born in Boon (Germany) and lives and works in Berlin. His work has been shown in various exhibitions, notably at Esbjerg Kunstmuseum (Denmark, 2006), AEREA (Sweden, 2008), Von-der-Heydt-Museum (Germany, 2009), Daimler Contemporary (Germany, 2011) and at Signum Foundation (Venice, 2013).
Daniel Lergon presents four paintings (each measuring 130×160 cm) – two of them green (vertical formats) and two of them red (horizontal formats), two of them in light tones and two of them in dark tones – creating a kind of complementary juxtaposition. What all the works have in common is that they are made with only one pigment on white canvas. In the case of the green paintings, it is a green phthalocyanine pigment, and in the case of the red works it is a red alizarin crimson pigment in oil, which is revealed in different densities and brightnesses.
The paintings create a dialogue between dark, solidified volumes, sketchy, scratched and nervously executed lines and ephemeral clouds and veils. Lergon generates his paintings from a single pigment, but understands how to use whole shades of phthalocyanine green and alizarin crimson red pigment, so that his complex compositions on canvases range from a shimmering light green/rose to a dark velvety, almost black hue. Although the reduction to a single colour might be considered limiting, looking at Lergon’s paintings, this self-imposed restriction opens up a concentrated and focused way of painting. Using a smooth and monochromatic picture plane, he emphasises artistic gestures such as brushstroke style, the addition and removal of colour with a scraper, and the modulation of colour density. The results are abstract formations and iridescent surfaces that appear three-dimensional. Lergon’s compositions are portraits of transformation, a very basic characteristic of all physical matter. They show states of action and flow on a painted (charged) surface.
