Andreas Chwatal

The works of artist Andreas Chwatal transport the viewer to a fanciful black-and-white world. This is the setting of fictional stories that the artist frequently tells in an interplay of text and images. Ink drawings are his medium, which he executes in small and (lately also) large formats in his unmistakeable signature. Chwatal’s roots are in representationalism, and his works on paper are characterised by precise, detailed work and a skilful play with light and shadows. In his earliest works, he increasingly turns to abstraction, which brings an additional level of meaning to the image content.

The Mitarbeiter der Wahrheit (Employees of Truth) series, which was created for STARTUPART II, is also characterised by abstraction. Chwatal’s ink drawings, which are mostly painted with wide, sweeping brush strokes, with some areas subsequently faded out using strong water pressure or dabbing and washing, look like enlarged details of his earlier, figurative works. His refined technique makes the two-dimensional colour application look three-dimensional. Some pieces create associations with western script or Far Eastern calligraphy.

Here, Chwatal refines his methods and narrative style in a subtle manner: Just like the extreme close-up and the zoom delve into abstraction as a narrative stylistic device from the realms of photography and film, Chwatal’s new gestural drawings retain an episodic aspect and create a new form of storytelling. Mitarbeiter der Wahrheit marked the emergence of an entirely new group of works in the artist’s oeuvre which is defined by a diverse abstract repertoire of shapes and remains consciously unclear in its narration. This way the mysticism inherent in Andreas Chwatal’s works remains and is even enhanced through the secretive title. 

Andreas Chwatal (born in 1982 in Regensburg) lives and works in Munich.