Stefan Osterider
When talking about the nature of painting, art seems to stand in contradiction to nature and to merely relate to the immanence of this medium. Both art and nature are individual systems. Both try to grasp the very foundations of their existence and origin. In the end, however, also painting is to be understood as an empirical science, based on the theories of colour and harmony and the laws of composition. Yet, how does this dialogue work if painting uses elements and forms of nature without actually depicting them in a documentary way? If it just refers to basic natural elements transformed into painting as abstract symbols? Stefan Osterider, who was born in Graz in 1968, moves in this very area which is characterized by the tension between a visible reality and the reality of the actual picture. On the canvas he develops his very own repertoire of shapes, thus creating a wide scope of associations.
Stefan Osterider started out studying printmaking at the “Mozarteum” in Salzburg but gradually shifted his focus to painting. At the beginning, nature and landscapes formed the basis of many of his paintings, a basis from where he eventually ventured into the realm of abstraction. Gradually, however, the illustrative and pictorial elements disappear and the use of colour and shapes in the ground of the painting gain more importance. At the same time, the artist’s style of painting becomes less obvious. The artistic themes and subjects which Stefan Osterider also finds through photography merely serve as a starting point in the creative process. Hence, today Stefan Osterider’s works are non-representational in the true sense of the word and remain open to association.
On the canvas, Stefan Osterider develops his own world, a world that does not stand in contradiction to nature but tries to explore the possibilities of artistic creation in the widest sense. Thus, his painting happens where both systems – the one of nature and the one of painting – meet. Obviously, the perception of nature and life happens before or parallel to shaping a work of art, yet without slipping into a trivial or romantic description. Evidently, this is best achieved by through reduction of form as in this way the dialogue between actual perception and shaping it in an artistic process is most lively. Naturally, this corresponds to the intentions of the artist who in his pictures tries to grasp the nature of shapes and to condense and reduce them. Stefan Osterider also sees this process as a philosophical dialogue between himself and the actual manifestation of the canvas: on the one hand, he tries to achieve an effect of depth through colour, while on the other he places elements and shapes on top which remain on the surface and therefore actually break the effect of depth. All this is a process far away from e.g. the speed of action painting as it takes time. And taking his time is something very characteristic of the artist.
[…]As mentioned above, photography is one source of inspiration for the artist. Therefore, many of his themes and motifs are derived from photos of urban architecture. The artist is most interested in block-like houses and isolated blocks of flats which find their way into his pictures as fragments and symbols. They are architectural elements that he tries to systematically place on a background of colour; they may be grids existing in our every-day surroundings, such as streets, maps, guiding systems, underground networks, etc. which he transforms and in this way creates new relations and junctions. Although his paintings may be very different from each other, what connects them is a high level of self-reflection, in which, however, the focus is always on the actual elements of painting. There is an enigmatic element in his works, which makes one think of Alexander von Humboldt’s conversation with Pater Zea in Daniel Kehlmann’s novel “Measuring the World”:
Lines happened everywhere, said Humboldt. They were an abstraction. Wherever there was space as such, there were lines.
Space as such was elsewhere, said Pater Zea.
Space was universal!
Being universal was an invention.
Or maybe it is just as Martin Lüperz says. For him, the enigmatic element is the passionate motivation of the artist who dwells in his element “in order to deal with the unforeseeable”.
Silvie Aigner, Kunstverein Mistelbach, 2010