Galerie Richard

Sven-Ole FRAHM & Lorenzo POMPA - Path de deux

Press release

Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard brings together Sven-Ole Frahm and Lorenzo Pompa in an exhibition titled « Path de deux » from the 22nd November 2008 to 10th January 2009. Sven-Ole Frahm invites Lorenzo Pompa to share half of the exhibition space. Both artists will suggest a dialogue between painting and sculpture following a specific itinerary orchestrated by a disposition of horizontal and vertical sculptures and by the rhythm of the different canvas sizes.

Sven-Ole Frahm was born in 1972 and lives in Berlin. Lorenzo Pompa was born in 1962 and lives in Düsseldorf. Sven-Ole Frahm is one of the actors of the new abstraction in Germany. Lorenzo Pompa appears as one of the most promising young German sculptors. In both cases, this new form of abstraction does not originate in the elevation to transcendence and sublimation, but in an inspiration from the pictorial practice of abstract painting. Sven-Ole Frahm spreads liquid acrylic paint on a canvas laid on the floor. Guided by the artist who controls the flow of the patch, it spreads according to the imperfections of the ground. In his newest paintings, he adds a gestural calligraphy that enriches his palette and transforms his paintings in polychrome symphonies. In order to convey the second geometrical aesthetic, Sven-Ole Frahm cuts up the painted canvas in straight pieces of quadrangular, rectangular and diamond-shaped forms. As it was a puzzle of which he had already imagined the final image, he sows the pieces together in a new arrangement. This way he adds a geometrical structure to the swaying colors that collide with the borders of each fraction of the painting.

Lorenzo Pompa creates white plaster sculptures. Their whiteness unites them in a general fashion of “crisp elegance”. It becomes obvious that these blocs gather geometrical elements suggesting stone, marble in particular, and curved elements, giving them the physiognomy of bubble-wrapped or baggie-wrapped objects. To sum up, we could say that Lorenzo Pompa stages an instructive show of a wild wasteland filled with plastic bags and miscellaneous materials covering a field of ancient ruins. He blends in a single white organic volume a meticulous geometrical aesthetic conveying solidity and an organic and chaotic aesthetic of a soft and fragile material. Surprisingly, Lorenzo Pompa’s columns betray a more classical elegance despite the strangeness of their complex and improbable forms. At the same time, these columns rotate, twist and seem to be composed of an accumulation of various materials. Both astonishingly stable and potentially unstable, in a way they feature a contemporary baroque style.

Sven-Ole Frahm participated in the exhibition Compilation III in the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf in 2007 and was granted the 60th Bergischer Kunstpreis 2006 of the Kunstmuseum Solingen. His works are exhibited in galleries in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. Lorenzo Pompa has taken part in the exhibition SkulpturSkulptur in the Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr in 2007 and has had a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Wilhelmshöhe, in Ettligen in 2006. His works are exhibited in galleries in Düsseldorf and Delft.

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