| Thomas Scheibitz's vast canvases can be an | | | | whole. The surfaces of Scheibitz's works are far |
| unsettling experience: the brightly colored surfaces of | | | | from uniform: streaky brushstrokes and drips of color |
| his paintings manage simultaneously to convey | | | | permeate the canvas, and some sections are left |
| unbridled energy and leave one inexplicably cold. It is | | | | unfinished, merely sketched in. These visible traces of |
| precisely this paradox that enables the German artist | | | | Scheibitz's process serve to activate his paintings, |
| to so successfully evoke the malaise of | | | | imbuing them with an expressionistic vitality. At the |
| contemporary culture. His work hovers uneasily | | | | same time, Scheibitz's compositions keep his paintings |
| between abstraction and representation, residing | | | | at a chilly remove. We are clearly not invited to enter |
| within the ever-growing rift between lived experience | | | | his world-an impression intensified by the unyielding |
| and mediated image. This exhibition includes an | | | | flatness of his picture plane. |
| entirely new body of paintings created during | | | | Thomas Scheibitz doesn't paint a subject, but offers |
| Scheibitz's residency at the Headlands Center for the | | | | a panoptic view as a solidified whole. Adopting the |
| Arts in Marin, CA as well as works on paper and | | | | flatness of medieval painting, perspective is |
| sculpture. Each of Scheibitz's paintings features some | | | | delineated through overlapping layers and scale. |
| recognizable and usually quite mundane object or | | | | Flower, building and mountain integrate as an abridged |
| landscape-a flower, an apartment building, a stairwell. | | | | version of space, a synopsis of grandeur. |
| This subject matter is then thoroughly abstracted so | | | | Thomas Scheibitz presents the sublime as an |
| that only the vestiges of its structure shine through. | | | | algorithmic formula: mysticism denuded into a |
| Solid forms are broken up into jagged planes of color, | | | | composite of shapes and patterns. A super-modern |
| which are thickly outlined with contrasting hues in a | | | | reinvention of the romantic landscape, Thomas |
| manner reminiscent of the late-nineteenth-century | | | | Scheibitz creates a sense of awe not in the picture |
| Fauvists. Each shape manages to stand boldly alone, | | | | itself, but in the graphic simplicity with which such an |
| yet the composition never seems unduly fragmented; | | | | overwhelming concept is inferred. |
| the shapes somehow coalesce to form a coherent | | | | |