Julio Reichel's new exhibition (1981) created from a series of paintings mostly painted directly for GaP, the title loosely refers to Stanley Kubrick's cult film 1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey. Among other things, he made his mark in the history of cinema with his innovative visual approach and concentration on ambiguous visual narration, so that the entire first half hour of the story goes without a single word. Also, Reichel's contemporary canvases show more than they speak. And although he still supplements his painting with occasional inscription interventions, the main pictorial effectiveness is currently generated by the visual component.
An open concept creating space for different interpretations or a specific color composition and composition can certainly be similar. It is also due to the fact that Julius Reichel, in agreement with the theme - after a relatively long time - places an unobtrusive emphasis on abstract expression with subtle - more or less clear - hints of figuration. The last time abstraction on such a scale appeared at the turn of 2017/18. Like Kubrick's "philosophical film opera", his painting also strives for the greatest possible unencumberedness, and it is precisely the freedom of the pictorial story and its emotions that probably unites the two creators the most.
Julius Reichel also touches on the evolutionary process in accordance with the film "template", but he himself edits the painting as a traditional visual basis. In reality, this represents above all a tendency towards simplification, a conscious work in a primitivizing framework, which can manifest itself not only in the effort for an uncomplicated expression, but also in the "carelessness" of the artisanal approach, as it is embodied in, for example, the application of pigments directly from the tube or the use of glued and worn brushes. The method of painting itself is naturally linked to this, the basis of which are intuitive procedures based on the initial linear thickening of the picture surface, which is followed by adding emphasis with colors.
The result is, on the one hand, canvases full of non-objective spectral noises with an irregular crust of white border painted in a single layer alla prima, on the other, several layered figurative abbreviations of strange aliens based on the typical morphology of Japanese manga comics. The whole can be perceived not only as an interconnected cycle of images, but also as individual elements of a changing visual situation. A few crypto-words – FOMO, DUMP, CHAOS, BOOST or MILION - only specify what kind of universe we are talking about here.
Exhibition curator: Radek Wohlmuth
