Urban Grünfelder: o.T., 2006, ceramic, varnish, 23.6 x 21.7 x 13.8 in / Courtesy Schmidla & Voss Galerie, Cologne

Under the title EcceHomo21 Schmidla & Voss Galerie in Cologne showcases sculptures and paintings by the Vienna-based artist Urban Grünfelder. Grünfelder was born 1967 in Brixen/Italy and studied sculpturing and painting.

Dagmar Schmidla says about the artist Urban Grünfelder: „Is it not true that minimalism is an advantage in order to cling to a moment, if you can include the work of Urban Grünfelder in this? The design of the sculptures cannot be called into question, they are concrete in their declarations, there are no more alternatives left. The observer is unavoidably brought into an ambivalence of feelings. On the one hand, astonishment over the unmistakable directness of the sculptures, on the other hand, he feels provoked, as he has been caught. This leads to a psychedelic experience, an optical euphoria, one wants to touch the sculptures. The chosen monochrome colours, high-gloss, strengthen this impulse further. Every figure is individual and shows a concrete representation of human situations and emotions. 'Behold the man' (quote: Luther Bible).

Urban Grünfelder develops his sculptures out of ceramics, which belongs to humankind’s oldest cultural skills. The raw material clay, out of which the ceramic figures are eventually formed, suggests vitality to the observer. The figures grow beyond themselves and overstep their reality, a parody of the original humans.

This clarity continues in Urban Grünfelder's oil pictures. His paintings are based on the fact that what can be seen, is. Every picture is an object - always dichromatic, always symmetrical. Is there only really that to see, which you see - without meaning, without legitimisation, without ideology and without humanistic values? No, Urban Grünfelder's pictures do the preliminary work for the observer. The colour in the background becomes the energy for perception. The almost painful meeting of contours of abstractly displayed humans, always without faces, without individuality, with the encompassed area, suggests being trapped in the room. The observer has the opportunity to dissolve this abstraction, from rational order to becoming sensory overwhelmed.”