Contemplating Nature in a Reduced-Mobility Environment. "The events of
the year 2021, which was defined by lockdowns, the pandemic, and
restrictions, has brought out the resonance in my pictures of Gustave
Courbet's realism," Alexander Ruthner (b. Vienna, 1982; lives and works
in Vienna) says about his most recent works: oil paintings featuring
lush green vegetation and veritable down comforters painted all-over in
saturated color gradients. The works will make their public début as the
publication is released in the summer of 2021, hence the word "Summer"
in the title. The other word, "Cour," is a nod to the first syllable of
the French painter's name as well as French for "court," a term the
artist creatively reinterprets as a synonym for the solitary "castle of
the mind" to which we have retreated under pandemic conditions. Ruthner,
who studied with Peter Kogler, Daniel Richter, and Albert Oehlen,
revisits the boscage and pasture painting of past eras in new works that
propose a distinctive personal interpretation of that tradition's charm.
Alexander Ruthner's work has been shown at Kunsthalle Wien, the
Whitechapel Gallery, London, and the National Museum of Montenegro, a.o.
