Klaus Drechsler

Capturing and highlighting the visually »fruitful« moment of a situation that is seen as real or perceived as surreal is the key. Using pencils, watercolours, oil paints or algraph as his preferred printing technique, and for the past two decades also sculptural forms and even the medium of hand drawing, which usually comes at the beginning and often already offers him solutions: he does not hide the persistent struggle for truthfulness in his works – they thrive on it.

Klaus Drechsler's still life arrangements are multi-dimensional in their conception. The range of motifs varies from objects from the immediate everyday environment to objects with extensive symbolic content. Playing cards, seashells and skulls provide the artist with the intellectual and creative framework for his perpetual dialogue with the theme of vanitas. Impressed by the calmly inspired, objectively clear compositions of Spanish masters such as Francisco Zurbarán and Juan Sánchez Cotán, which are filled with bright colours and firm corporeality, Klaus Drechsler similarly lends his objects an enhanced conceptual conciseness.

Drechsler's character is strong enough to fit into a great tradition without worrying about marketable avant-gardism. He is as close to the old German masters as he is to the efforts to melt Classical Modernism into a renewed, contemporary awareness of tradition.