RENE STESSL
PURE REASON MUST NEVER PREVAIL

18.12.2012. – 4.01.2013.
Opening on the December 18th 2012 at 7 pm.

Karas Gallery
Praška 4
10 000 Zagreb

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Yes. They are sexy. The paintings by René Stessl. Sexy, because they are paintings with attitude.The abstract paintings don’t won’t to flatter somebody expect themselves: They don´t won’t to impress anybody except themselves. René Stessl paintings are happening, because they have to happen. Thereby the artist is a kind of agency. The art itselfs knows where to go. In other words: What has to come out, has to come out.In a perfect planned, organized, stylish world the abstract paintings by the 1974 born austrian artist appear with bluntness, impact and expressivity. Refreshing straight, clear, but nevertheless peaceful. Why? Because René Stessl is not a fighter, he is no Don Quijote, who has to fight the canvas to beat the white. Imagine his paintings more like a synchronic pair skating sport on the ice – on which the challenge is not to let the other fall. His paintings rapping his dignifed colleges like Karl Otto Götz, Markus Prachensky or Pierre Soulages. Thats good. Because for Rene Stessl “informel” is an artistic attitude which is not connected to any point of time. “You must not paint like this anymore!”, this warning of the fainthearts does not exist for Stessl who studied at the academy of fine arts in Vienna / Austria. You have to imagine René Stessl as a happy person.
René Stessl lives in and works in Cologne / Germany. He is represented by the Cologne Gallery “TEAPOT”. Next to his abstract paintings Stessl acts as a performance artist. With his culinary performance “1hourrestaurant” he travelled around the world. The former stops of his ‘1hourrestaurant’: Williamsburg and Carol Gardens in Brooklyn, Downtown Manhattan, Times Square in Midtown, Bushwick, Bedstuy, a rooftop with a view of the Big Apple, Cologne, Vienna and Leipzig . Everything must happen as swiftly as possible, no time for licenses and other such nonsense. With this art performance Stessl irritates, distorts the fixed image of the location in question, wherever his restaurant opens and intrudes into the everyday life of its inhabitants who walk by each and every day. In case two passers-by overcome their initial reservation and sit down in the restaurant, the tasteful experience hauls them out of their everyday routine and plunges them into a sensual world for the duration of an hour.