Overview
Building tension on the surfaces of his paintings through his vigorous and fluid brushwork, Schierenberg captures the emotional range that exists in real life.
Flowers Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by award-winning figurative artist Tai Shan Schierenberg. On view will be paintings focusing on male figures and landscapes that explore the journey through manhood from youth to old age.
Seeking out particular qualities in his choice of form, Schierenberg selects his subjects for their potential to reveal an inner sentience through his engagement with the paint.
The first thing for me, as a painter, is the question: what will I discover by spending time with this image? To discover things about myself, and the world, and a shared humanity in another's face, relies on revealing the subtleties of experiences imprinted there. However, the way I like to use paint to do this, relies on gestural spontaneity and the possibility in the juicy chaos of creating revealing accidents. Tai-Shan Schierenberg
Building tension on the surfaces of his paintings through his vigorous and fluid brushwork, Schierenberg captures the emotional range that exists in real life. The portrait of a young man All the Young Dudes portrays the bravura of an adolescent youth, proffering his cigarette in a defiant gesture; whilst in contrast, the weary older subject of Wanderer invokes the spiritual burden of a man in self-imposed exile, contemplating the end of his life. Wanderer forms one of two images inspired by Schubert's song-cycle 'Wintereisse', the melancholic tale of a traveller's journey through a bleak and frozen wilderness. Even in works where the figure is absent such asGods Ourselves, Schierenberg plays with the potential for landscape to evoke the nuances of human sensibility.
The potent scene depicted in Descent from the Cross, in which four footballers are suspended mid-air, reveals its subjects in a state of being unselfconsciously in the moment. Their bodily contortions recall the muscular expressiveness of Rubens's painting of the same name. It may also be interpreted as a metaphor for men at war.
Testing the limits of "what painting can do that other mediums can't", Schierenberg's subjects appear to come into existence more fully through the visceral qualities of the paint itself, embodying the emotional subtleties of lived male experience.
Building tension on the surfaces of his paintings through his vigorous and fluid brushwork, Schierenberg captures the emotional range that exists in real life.
