Galerie b2

Gallery b2_ is happy to present Bastian Muhr‘s second solo exhibition at the spring gallery tour at Spinnerei. Bastian Muhr is laureate of the 20th Leipzig annual exhibition. Muhr presents new large-scale drawings as well as small-scale paintings on paper.

Above all, the artist‘s drawings disperse into different layers and images depending on the distance taken: What begins as a surface takes the shape of a graphic system upon further approach – revealing only from closer proximi­ty the presence of the illustrator in short strokes, which through frequent sharpening of the pencil and repeatedly novel motions of the hand never posess a standardised quality, but rather behave like small anomalies or deviations from a preconceived system. At the same time Bastian Muhr‘s drawings oscillate in the grey area between pattern and image, on the edges of both terms, thereby constantly (re)evaluating them. There are no recurring patterns, no logical geometric codes – a loss of overall perspective due to increased proximity. The works of Bastian Muhr always allude to the process of production, to a time-consuming effort demanding concentration and precision, whose out­come can only be evaluated aesthatically after the pictorial space has been filled and the system creatively processed.

While the first exploratory phase of this method of drawing has mostly been done with lead pencil, newer works are frequently open to probability and chance. The use of magic-pens (multi-colored pens or „rainbowpens“) marks a further declination of systemic drawing: fine gradients, only marginally controllable by the artist, randomly influence the surface as well as the single line.

Bastian Muhr was born in Braunschweig in 1981. He studied painting and graphic arts in the class of Annette Schröter from 2004-2010, receiving his postgraduate degree in 2013. His works are part of the collection of Deutsche Bundes­bank in Frankfurt and Kunstfond Dresden. He teaches at the Academy of visual Arts, Leipzig, in the department for painting / graphics as assistant to Prof. Ingo Meller. Bastian Muhr lives and works in Leipzig.