Fabian Warnsing: RAIN DROPS RAIN BOWS

18 Mar-16 Apr 2022

PV 17 Mar 2022, 6-8pm

Overview

KÖNIG LONDON is pleased to present the first solo exhibition with the German painter Fabian Warnsing. RAIN DROPS RAIN BOWS comprises Warnsing's most recent works on canvas, in which he employs and challenges traditional pictorial genres such as the female nude, interiors and still lifes.

Warnsing's motifs are inspired by his physical and virtual surroundings, enhanced and transformed through his imagination. He draws incessantly – in museums, in front of the computer, while looking at photos or films. Always on the lookout for new images, Warnsing is building a continuously expanding archive that documents characters, objects, abstract forms and fragments of texts. He assembles these into compositions that provoke layers of open association. 

The reduced, chromatic visual language of these paintings sit within the aesthetics of early animations in video games. Born in the 1990s, Warnsing belongs to a generation that grew up under the strong influence of digital imagery, witnessing its rapid development first hand. In his practice, he analyses the possibilities and inherent constraints of this imagery within his paintings. He is not interested in the smooth surfaces of perfect renderings that we know today, but rather indulges in the flaws and glitches of the digital image.  

A play between figurative representation and abstraction is omnipresent in Warnsing’s work and he incorporates historical references like the flat, fragmented compositions that echo ancient mosaics art and the abandonment of perspective and questioning of the function of image which sit in dialogue with classical modernist painting. 

Warnsing always allows the process of painting to remain visible. Layered corrections, gaps and mistakes are integral parts of the picture and encourage the viewer to question what is depicted. The means of painting are employed to examine our perception, our habits in seeing and the very image itself.

Fabian Warnsing (b. 1991 in Unna, Germany) is based in Berlin. In 2020, Warnsing was among the finalists of the Berlin Masters Award. The artist’s recent solo shows took place at NBB Galerie, Berlin (2021); Weserhalle, Berlin (2021); Fructaspace, Munich (2020); Galerie Rasche & Ripken, Berlin (2019); and Sparkasse Gelsenkirchen (2015). His work has been part of group exhibitions throughout Germany, Europe, and China, for example at Neuer Kunstraum Düsseldorf (2019); Trafo Gallery, Prague (2019); Kunstverein Duisburg, Duisburg (2018); Kunsthalle Münster (2017); Kunstverein Hamm, Hamm (2017); Oh La Artspace, Shanghai (2015); and Landesvertretung NRW, Brussels (2013), amongst others.

Artists