Artist: Kevin Klamminger

At its core, Kevin Klamminger’s first solo exhibition with Unit explores an interplay of contradictory forces. Influenced by a balance between conscious and unconscious minds, Promethean Approach presents a series of paintings that combine an almost hyperrealist visual language with a surreal atmosphere.

Paying close attention to light, the body of work is unified by its colour palette, a sunset glow of oranges, yellows and reds. The artist’s depiction of light requires a focus on its opposite as darkness and shadow bring balance to each painting. The interest in opposition evolves organically from Klamminger’s intuitive process, reflecting the internal discussion that takes place in his mind every time he works. Through this process, Klamminger strives to switch off his analytical mind, following instincts and intentions that are not always conscious.

Even though Klamminger’s intuitive process leans into chance, representational elements seep into each artwork, grounding the viewer in the real world despite dreamlike settings. These elements make up a body of symbols: horses, butterflies, shields and spears appear like clues that draw us into a search for meaning. While Klamminger does not abdicate responsibility for the significance of these symbols, he never wants to foreclose the interpretations of others. He does not ascribe any element with specific meaning, hoping to leave each painting up to the viewer’s interpretation. In turn, the viewer’s search for individual meaning becomes crucial to the artist’s process and to the artworks themselves.

Klamminger himself often wonders at the meaning behind these representational elements, which often materialise on his canvases without warning or prior thought. For example, the horse appears in various forms across the body of work. Klamminger is at once intrigued by the animal’s powerful musculature and its anxious nature. It is the idea of opposing forces that once more becomes important, as Klamminger ponders the paradoxical relationship between fear and power that is embodied in the horse’s image. These ideas are explored in the painting Veni, Vidi, Vici in which two horse riders collide on a beach. The sunny Mediterranean landscape clashes with the painting’s theme of combat. However, when we look closer, the two riders lose their clarity. The horses are strangely deformed and twisted, appearing almost as moving anatomical studies. White fabrics billow dramatically against a blue sky, but the riders themselves are disembodied, recognisable only from their helmets and shields. The initial heroism of the work gives way to a sense of fatalism as Klamminger upends our expectations of a traditional theme.

There is an interest here in ancient symbols and the iconography of knights, heroes and hybrid creatures. However, these ideas are never straightforwardly presented. In Lookout, a centurion figure is reduced to only a hand and nose. These images become strangely amusing, almost recalling the comical figure of the knight-errant, Don Quixote, who refuses to accept reality and prefers to live out the fantasy of a chivalric story. Perhaps the knight represents the conscious mind that tries to make sense of the subconscious model. Here, Klamminger engages our imagination, maintaining a sense of humour while playing with ideas from childhood stories and fairytales.

Klamminger comments that many of his paintings could easily have been abstract works in which non-representational forms clash and eventually find balance. However, Promethean Approach reveals a motivation to project meaning through something more figurative and concrete. This drive does not necessarily prescribe each painting’s direction and can even come after a painting’s completion. Often, when he finishes a work, Klamminger will encounter real-world references that recall his completed paintings. The representational process is seemingly turned on its head as subconsciously absorbed imagery, or “archetypes” as Klamminger calls them, are unknowingly transferred onto finished artworks.

Ultimately, however, Klamminger believes that psychoanalysing his own imagery would open too many doors, doors he does not necessarily want to go through. Promethean Approach explores the idea of process itself. It does not attempt to analyse this process, but visualise it, translating the artist’s inner dialogue onto the canvas as it takes shape.