Michael Streun | IN RAGE | Galerie Tammen | 08.09.-15.10.2023

until 15.10 | #4017ARTatBerlin | Galerie Tammen shows from 8th September 2023 the exhibition “IN RAGE” with paintings by the artist Michael Streun.

In his first exhibition at TAMMEN GALERIE, Swiss artist Michael Streun is showing a selection of works from the last six years. “Dystopias that take shape, visualised utopias and surreal pictorial worlds with ambivalent validity – these are the central elements in Streun’s paintings,” writes art historian Mario Schlachter. The works address social upheavals and radical changes and at the same time contain hopeful components.

In 2017, shortly after the attack on Breitscheidplatz, Michael Streun spent an intensive six months in this lively metropolis, which was in a kind of state of shock, thanks to a scholarship from the city of Thun. The mood in Berlin at that time and the developments of recent years with the pandemic, the increasing social tensions and the momentous war occupy the artist’s mind. And the increasingly “frenzied” world.

Michael Streun, Warner, 2022, oil on canvas, 200 x 180 cm, courtesy of Galerie Tammen

Michael Streun is constantly developing his figurative painting and increasingly works on larger formats. The compositions do not reflect the actuality of the day, but make the incessant changes visible. Streun works slowly. So slowly that the pictures are sometimes overtaken by actuality during the painting process. This creates surreal cross-fades and superimpositions. They reflect the complexity of our time.

Michael Streun counters these “touching” picture themes of the present with an optimistically strong force with small-format portraits of young “power women”. The artist gives them names with an “A”. A stands for departure. Through their presence, he creates a balance in the exhibition. The series forms the self-confident counterpart between gloomy aspects of contemporary events.