Benjamin Moravec

Benjamin Moravec is a young painter with french-czech origins currently working in Nürnberg (DE). His oil paintings are compositions that combine fictituous images with images taken from photographs, resulting in multi-layered visual structures. In a fascinating way Moravec combines a purely contemporary approach to visual content with the traditional oil painting technique of his 19th century ancestors. His canvasses show original talent, great feel for composition and authentic gesture.

Deweer gallery introduced Benjamin Moravec for the first time to an audience outside Gemany with a one-man-show entitled Happy together & mourir ensemble in 2006. The title refered to themes that troubled the artist when he was a child, such as dying together with unknown people, and paradise.

His second exhibition at Deweer gallery Une vie sans fin will be mounted in the gallery's two exhibition halls and will contain a large selection of both large and small paintings and will thus present a beautiful overview of the French artist's painting from the years 2006-2010.

At the opening of the exhibition on Saturday 6 November 2010 DEWEER gallery will present its monographic publication Benjamin Moravec – Spiegel im Spiegel. The richly illustrated book contains a.o. a text by Prof. Dr. Harald Kunde, curator and former director of the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany about Benjamin Moravec’s art of painting as well as the transcription of a recent conversation between the artist and Philippe Van Cauteren, artistic director of S.M.A.K. (Museum of Contemporary Art), Ghent, Belgium.
All texts are published in Dutch and English.

To order the book, please contact the gallery.

The following fragments are quotes from the book.

From: “Harald Kunde – Happy Together? Comments on Benjamin Moravec’s oeuvre”

“Reviewing the painter’s work so far, we can observe three essential features. The first is Benjamin Moravec’s great interest in all forms of large surfaces. These play a dominant role in his pictures, whether as walls of houses, concrete gates, billboards or screens in an imagined cinema. Then there is the ostentatious break with all forms of continuity in the pictures. As obvious compositions, every part of a picture maintains its independence within the heterogeneous whole, demonstrating – as a picture within a picture – his programmatic desire not to be slave to any governing subordination. This feature is closely interwoven with the third observation, relating to the sources used in his pictures. With no sense of respect or hierarchy, he goes about using all sorts of sources, ranging from art history and advertising to pornography, whereby a certain similarity with the functionality of a web search engine can be discerned.”

From the conversation between Philippe Van Cauteren and the artist

“The choice I have made for painting, I made at the time when the new media, photography, video, digital images etc. were being pushed to the foreground. I wanted to find the characteristics that are specific to painting, that allow it to present an image. Painting has its role in this universe of images. The painted image is as valuable as the photographed image. The one or the other will express different things. I sought to free myself from the purely technical and pictorial aspect to create an image that gives meaning.(…) My choice of technique and formats allows me to stay out of these masses. I am looking for something more personal.”