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NOW ON VIEW: STEPHAN GRUNENBERG erdregionale Repräsentanten machen auf sich aufmerksam in our OLD gallery location at Marburger strasse 3 12.10. – 26.10.2024



Everything ‘below the waist’ plays a significant role in Stephan Grunenberg’s (*1954) first solo exhibition at Robert Grunenberg. While in the traditional canon of painting the face and upper body are given great attention, in his most recent paintings this area is literally cut off. The paintings were made after Grunenberg’s dog joined the family and he adopted the dog’s perspective. Brightly coloured, extremely reduced forms of shoes, feet, legs, trousers and stockings are juxtaposed with everyday objects that are often barely noticed: flowers, books, vases and shoe soles. All these elements become part of an almost choreographed, precisely balanced composition, which he first defines in sketches. The works of the former Städel student, who began his career in the 1980s, can be influenced by post-war modernist design and illustration, Matisse or mass culture, as well as by personal reflections on painting and life.




The objects that Grunenberg, the gallery owner’s father, incorporates into his compositions come from his immediate environment and are often charged with personal memories and contemporary history.
Formally, he is concerned with the tension between the colour field and the emotionally charged painterly gesture. At the same time, he negotiates painterly and social hierarchies in a deliberately simple, almost abstract formal language. Everything in Grunenberg’s idiosyncratic paintings has meaning, has equal weight, nothing is taboo or too banal. Everything is there because it should be, because it has its place in this painting – and in the world.