Leonhard Hurzlmeier

For several years, now, Leonhard Hurzlmeier's paintings have concentrated on depicting people, with women's portraits being the focus of his interest. However, the artist's goal is not to create a detailed and precise representation of a certain person but rather to examine the image of women in our society. The resonant erotica is thus also a portrayal of a frequently stereotypical gender role and fantasy.

Leonhard Hurzlmeier is showing four new pieces from this body of work at STARTUPART II. Here, too, the artist plays humorously with contemporary topoi and classic iconography. Even just a few details trigger associations and provide hints for interpretation. 

Hurzlmeier's paintings fascinate with their powerful, reduced colour palette, divided into strictly composed fields from which a formal, abstract figure is assembled. The smooth, even paint application and restriction based on geometric parameters give rise to the characteristic, extreme two-dimensional nature of his works. The protagonists are developed layer by layer over the course of a long work process. Their form has not yet been determined at the beginning but rather comes into being on the basis of complex mathematical rules, which prescribe specific radii and angles and whose boundaries the artist exploits to the maximum. Despite the reduced colour palette and beyond a realistic representation, powerful portraits are created which take on a certain seemingly contradictory vividness and lively dynamic through flat, clear shades and stratification and limitation of the colour fields. It is with this strictly limited repertoire of shapes that Leonhard Hurzlmeier has developed his own unmistakeable signature.

Leonhard Hurzlmeier (born in 1983 in Starnberg) lives and works in Munich.