art place berlin - exhibition: Painting by Tomohisa ISHIZUKA, Ivar KAASIK, Alexander KOSYAK, Raphael POLLACK art place berlin





Painting by Raphael Pollack

It Never Snows When You Want It To - Oil on canvas, 210 x 190cm







Two Paintings by Raphael Pollack

left: Call Of The Lighthouse / 2011 - Oil on canvas, 110 x 180cm
Far And So Close / 2013 - Oil on canvas, 110 x 180cm











Works by Raphael Pollack (USA, *1942)
in the exhibition
Four Positions of Contemporary Painting


February 27th - June 14th, 2014

"My attempt in painting is to create form through color and not the other way around. I love the moment when that happens but it happens so to speak in its own time and especially not when I want it. It's a process that involves much patience. While painting you watch some-thing grow knowing it can change its direction at any moment."


Adventure painting

About the paintings of Raphael Pollack
by Horst Hummel

In the paintings of Raphael Pollack, we encounter a rare stroke of luck. It's the luck of the unadulterated view into the world of painting as pure painting. It's the game, if not the battle of color, form and light, which takes place in the works of Raphael Pollack in all seriousness in front of our eyes. It is the struggle of the protagonists appearing in his pictures, which are and want to be nothing else than themselves. Pollack's images don't represent, they are. It is the struggle of color, form and light in seemingly intractable conflicts in which Pollack leads them and their dissolution with which he surprises himself and us in almost inconceivable ways.

The paintings of Raphael Pollack lead us into experiences that are comparable with the observation of the forces of nature coming to rest after they have clashed into each other unleashed. They lead us into a world full of contradictions, which have settled in states of great tension and depth. It is the beauty occurring in the resolution of the contradictions, which touches us.

Perhaps it goes too far to connect the paintings of Raphael Pollack with his childhood in Little Italy, New York in the 1950s. Nevertheless, it makes sense. Because there as a child and member of his street gang he encountered not only contradictions difficult to reconcile, but also got insights into the world of painting through Hans Hoffmann, Willem de Kooning and the painting father of his friend.
If you cannot resolve the contradictions on the street, it might be worth the effort to try it on the canvas. One has to be grateful to Raphael Pollack for his courage to embark on this adventure and share with us the beauty that arises from it.

Berlin, the 7th of February 2014




art place berlin - forum for contemporary art - international gallery - public exhibition space