Rotwand Gallery is proud to present for the first time a solo exhibition of Filib Schürmann’s work.

For some years now, the drawer Filib Schürmann (*1976) has attracted our attention with his striking, witty and off-beat drawings. His universe is populated with bizarre creatures, little monsters and hairy beasts; we recognize in his drawings echoes of the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat or representatives of Art Brut. The creatures are comical, light-footed, bold and often seem also quite malicious.

Filib Schürmann’s newest works arrive on the scene like chaotic and disordered thoughts or wild nightmares. They are characterized by high degrees of coalescence and unfathomably somber traits. Schürmann applies to them a large amount of black ink that takes up a major part of the picture plane and from which his figures seem to be extricating themselves. The artist has recently started working on plastic film and uses it in a whole series of works, imposing one image over a second one, whereby the lower layer is drawn painterly flat and the foreground very much in draughtsman style marked by forceful black areas.
Filib Schürmann has a masterly feel for the effect of lines and planes and for the balance between the concentrated areas of the pencil drawing, of the black and of the painterly daubs in color. The pictures in this way achieve an enormous depth, likewise reflected in the contents, in that we see ourselves confronted suddenly and very directly with creatures that may slumber in the darkest part of our souls and that we would like to know were under lock and key.
To the artist the starting point for the drawings are his own obsessions, fantasies, fears or compulsions. The out-of-control and the chaotic seem to have gained the upper hand. In addition, Schürmann’s works are frequently characterized by a combination of image and word, which refer to each other in reciprocal supplementation and enhancement. What at first glance seems like harmless doodling, a closer look proves to be multifaceted commentary on our everyday world with its worries, dark abysses and joys.

Text by Daniela Hardmeier