advent calendar 2022
This year's Advent calendar will soon be opening its windows and so, in the 24 days until Christmas, a new detail of a picture can be discovered every day: In general, I feel that Advent is a time of anticipation for Christmas and looking forward to all that the new year may bring. But it also offers the opportunity for contemplation, reflection and looking back on events that lie behind us. What I tend to forget even in this mode of looking backwards and forwards, however, is to look at the moment and the thoroughly beautiful things that happen to us every day and which we often move past far too quickly and hastily without really noticing them.
This year's painting seemed to me particularly suitable for expressing this thought, as I have worked on and before it for many days, weeks and hours over the past four years with phases of patience and impatience, of quick casting and detailed elaboration, with detached composure but also with emotional fervour. Over the next 24 days, you can discover and experience all these moments step by step - perhaps an incentive, especially during Advent, not to always look forwards and backwards, but to look more often at the here and now.
By the way, this year the daily unveiling will be accompanied for the first time by »24°Streichen« (or »strokes«) with charcoal pencil on paper - a small foretaste of the momentum of artistic projects that I will take with me into the next year and about which I will inform you all in good time.
In this spirit, I wish you all a happy and reflective Advent! Stay healthy! Sincerely, Florian
BORN OF STONE
Matera | Rome | Vienna
»Sasso Uomo« (detail), 120 x 90 cm, acrylic on canvas
project: BORN OF STONE
exhibitions
MATERA
Casa Cava
Via San Pietro Barisano, 47
75100 – Matera (IT)
20th Jule - 3rd August 2019
La Lopa
Via Bruno Buozzi, 13
75100 - Matera (IT)
www.lalopa.com
4th August - 8th September 2019
ROMA
Centro Pastorale Pellegrini di Lingua Tedesca
Via del Banco di S. Spirito 56
00186 - Roma (IT)
25th October - 8th November 2019
VIENNA
Istituto italiano di cultura a Vienna
Ungargasse 43
1030 Vienna (AUT)
21st November - 20th December 2019
» By initiating the project BORN OF STONE, I traced my artistic steps in the heart of Matera, with the aim of capturing my impressions from the there present existential simplicity of life: The visitor perceives Matera today as a giant maze of alleys, caves and rupestrian churches, similar to an organism made of stone, sculpted by those people who have continued to live here for over 9000 years. This continuity of human settlement also constitutes its ancient backdrop. What I found in the Sassi are cold stone houses, abandoned and destroyed churches, ruined gorges and forgotten paths that tell of the inhabitants who once lived here. My intention is not only to create a contemporary portrait of the European Capital of Culture 2019, but also to display the unique atmosphere of this city, a mirror shown to modern people reminding them of their origins. «
> more informations about »Born of Stone«... [Florian Köhler, June 2019]
exhibitions & projects: 2015-2018
