Rainer Fetting Berlin. 15.04.-12.09.2011, Berlinische Gallerie Landesmuseum Für Moderne Kunst, Fotographie und Architektur. Alte Jakobstraße 124-128.

Rainer Fetting Berlin. 15.04.-12.09.2011, Berlinische Gallerie Landesmuseum Für Moderne Kunst, Fotographie und Architektur. Alte Jakobstraße 124-128. 10969 Berlin. DE, By craniv boyd.

 

 Behold! For, I am the accomplishments of an artist explorer! Seem to sing the paintings of, living German Expressionist painter, Rainer Fetting.  Large Format Acrylic, dispersion and Tempera expressionist paintings of content that is out-ly, blatantly vibrantly, almost, dare I write, militantly, homo erotic, paintings and prints on view at a National Museum, for Modern Art, cannot really be said to sing. Art objects, when existent as, pigments on canvass are silent, however the contents of Rainer Fetting's oeuvre displayed, are loud, as loud can get, for past modern painting.

 

View of the Berg's and view of a young man's all bare back:

 

A work titled I find you sexy, (authors translation), is a vertically oriented tableaux, which places on view a posing male nude, in harsh black contour lines that would be at home, let us say in a, Neo Gothic, Max Beckmann painting.  Naked dude has one arm stretched over his, neatly cut, short head of brown hair; he contemplates a vista of the Swiss Alps, or a Mountain range. The work is painted and is introduced to the public within the frame of this retrospective exhibition of a Berlin based painter, of the caliber of the young wilds. It is not without uncertainty that I view the painting I find you sexy, that shares a wall with the Male bathhouse content answer to Henri Matisse's eternal dance, motif. Observing the painting wonders if it is painted of a man standing in a Berliner Zimmer with a large poster of the Alps, or if it is rather made, created, inspired recovering after a dirty weekend in somebody's Châtlet. With that aside the connexion between the angular chiseled beauty of geological formations, remnants of the last ice age, and the musculature of the standing man, is formed by Fetting's brush with his application of a strong electric blue. In both the nocturnal sky, the back of the man, the stones of the expressionistic painted, mountains.    

 

 

CBGB's OMFUG, dilemma:

 

If you have not bathed in the sonic haze of the now gone baby gone, legendary, birthplaces of the punk rock and new wave youth movements on the Bowery, in Manhattan, than perhaps your understanding and empathy for, Fettings series Guitarist and Drummer, will be severely impaired. I for one hope not, the paintings are a superior quality meditation on syncopation in fast pasted emotional music; one is placed between the ears of a rock and roll drummer on stage, his fragmentary view of the lead guitarist. Fetting was there in the "scene" what ever that was when bands like the Ramones or the New York Dolls were playing there. This series is a painted record, a testament to the nascence of the Punk rock scene in New York City in the late 1970's and the early 1980's. How will a viewer feel when looking at an artwork about a sub culture rock and roll concert, when they have not been to such a kind of space?  Rainer Fetting does a great service to the raw energy that was in CBGB's, via his means of brilliant application of color.

 

Yo la Reyñia:

 

The art historical reference and the appreciation of the great master court painters of the baroque era, namely, Velázquez is both subverted, and supported brilliantly, Fetting paints a full-length portrait of himself, in Drag as the Infanta of Spain. The painting is lushly framed in a campy way, evocative of the popular presentation method of a Rembrandt or a Hals.  The strange thick and heavy paint application, as well as Fetting's bizarre color choice begs the question, just how serious about your love for the 17^th century Spanish master painter are you Mr. Fetting?  Yet the fun, large scale grappling with the cultural treasures, images, of the European powers that be as it were, is a tough and lively approach on how to make a self portrait as a painter living in Europe, while the Berlin wall is still up.

 

Color blind:

 

The exhibition is titled: Fetting Berlin, and in many ways the museum personnel are correct, in their basic, two-word-only, titling of the retrospective survey of a protean German expressionist painter. This exhibition is Berlin as seen by Rainer Fetting, it is as much Fetting as it is the divided city, Berlin, of the times when Fetting was living in that city, when the wall vanished or visa versa. The colors of the paintings are down right sexy, ample, many colors of the rainbow, and when used in fast paced, wet on wet painting, in the hands of Rainer Fetting, for city-scape's of a traumatized, amputated Urban landscape, you can truly feel the atmosphere that inspired David Bowie's song Heroes.  Drawings of the wall, painted by an artist who was standing by the wall, paintings of the Iron Curtain in its most concrete manifestation, in colors that look hallucinogenic, yet at the same time all too believable, wall jumpers and self-portraits, in the Germanic, melancholic tradition dating back to the gloomy painter print maker, from Nüremberg, A. Dürrer, this of self portrait with the wall. The Berlin wall, of 1977, the year of the date when the painting, was made, looks grey and depressing and the young artist depicted in vibrant colors forced into grey scale looks depressed as well.  By craniv boyd.