An exploration of the absence and presence of the (red) color.
David Ostrowski widens his spectrum of meditations on the color red with The Thin Red Line. The German painter has been long experimenting with chromatic hues on white or neutral background, but it took him almost a decade to go back to investigating the scarlet shade—a coloring bearing social and cultural implications, besides playing a fundamental part on the history of painting. Made using found material and canvases painted with acrylic and lacquer, Ostrowski's recent work are an exploration of the absence and presence of the color.
Published on the occasion of the same-titled solo show, the artist's first with Sprüth Magers in London, in collaboration with Karma Books, the catalogue—characterized by a red Pantone that changes its tone when printed on the pages made of three different papers, mirroring the artist's chromatic research—is to be considered as further piece of the exhibition, featuring a series of texts Ostrowski commissioned from writers and academics, with the word “red” as the only instruction
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Sprüth Magers, London, from November 2018 to January 2019.
Experimenting with gesture and imperfection, the pictural work of the Cologne-based artist David Ostrowski (born 1981) is characterized by the use of a reduced color palette on vast, nearly empty fields covered with occasional gestures and marks. In a minimalist and seemingly nonchalant style, the artist applies lacquer, spray paint and found materials—which he uses also for his collages. His compositions are imbued with contingency and the impossibility to revise or correct an action. The rough canvas resulting from these coincidences and mistakes invite the viewer to an haptic experience in which each of Ostrowski's elements seems to appear simultaneously by chance and beauty.
