Norbert Witzgall

Painters, with their anachronistic need for isolation and their attachment to ‘métier’, have rather become exceptions on today’s artscene. This is certainly true for Norbert Witzgall, who concentrates on one single genre: the portrait. However, by researching its possibilities and testing its conventions, Witzgall takes the painted portrait far beyond its traditional intentions. In each of his works a system of references – stylistic and iconographical choices – is at play. In other words, in Witzgall’s oeuvre the portrait ceases to exist as a genre, and becomes a language.

As an iconographical basis for his works, Witzgall appropriates all kinds of portraits, borrowed from carefully selected photographic source materials. His choice ranges from pictures of glamorous Hollywood stars found in magazines and photographs of relatives he only knows from the family album, to renditions of Old Masters or posed portraits of friends.
This appropriation process often couples an omission of redundant pictorial elements with a quite faithful, almost academic imitation, as it were, of one or more features of the original portrait. Often, Witzgall also uses collage to assemble the composition.

Norbert Witzgall was born in 1976 in Münchberg, Germany, and currently lives and works in Berlin. He obtained a degree from the Universität der Künste in Berlin. He recently had solo and duo projects at SOUTERRAIN and Autocenter, Berlin, and took part in groupshows at Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Studio Kara Walker, New York, Centro Ricerche Accademia di Brera, Milan, TÄT, Berlin and many other venues.