Painting with a Filter
Torsten Ruehle stages his paintings in an atmosphere between the every day and fiction. The Dresden native studied painting in both his hometown and Hamburg, but also worked on contemporary film and photography.
In his pictures, he indicates situations that can never be fully explained, that always hide little riddles and narrative moments. References to cinematographic role models like David Lynch’s surreal American suburban scenes of the '60s and ‘70s fascinate the artist. He develops his own unique living rooms through artificiality and staging. This is either done intentionally with minimalist design furniture and cool colours, or falls back to decades like the '50s and '60s with a yellow ambiance and plush sofas. Nostalgic, they develop an additional level of time, like a peek into a family photo album.
The scenes emerge like a memory, visible to the viewer only through a cloudy veil. His paintings reveal a remembered moment: a peek at a souvenir shop’s surreal collection of Madonna statues.
Like a film director, Torsten Ruehle subtly changes perspectives: first he looks down at a scene from a bird’s eye view and watches an extra laying prone on a couch from above. Then he pans to the front of a shop window, as if you were standing before it in curiosity.
Typical of his compositions are the conduction of graphic lines and the explicitly spaced model rooms in which people reside like movie extras. The viewer nevertheless seeks out familiar objects or relations, orienting him or herself to the unusual perspective, questioning reality and fiction. The documentation of every day life becomes a quest, stunning with surprise effects.
His work offers a brief glance into the cinematic archive of the modern age and triggers familiar associations with one’s own biographic background.
Christina Wendenburg
| 1975 | Born in Dresden, Germany |
| 1994 - 2000 | Studies in Dresden and Hamburg, Germany |
| Lives and works in Berlin, Germany |
Exhibits (Selection)
| Exhibitions (Selection) | |
| 2011 | Narkose, Galerie Hilgemann, Berlin, Germany |
| 2009 | Filter, 2x2 Projects, Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
| Positionen, Neues Kunsthaus, Ahrenshoop, Germany | |
| 2008 | Blue Velvet, Gallery Kai Hilgemann, Berlin, Germany |
| KG Eiland, PPS, Vienna, Austria | |
| Define the line, 2x2 Projects, Amsterdam, The Netherlands | |
| Stock Exchange, Gallery Kai Hilgemann, Berlin, Germany | |
| 2007 | Nexus, Kunstverein Apex, Göttingen, Germany |
| KG Eiland, German Embassy, Studio Marzi, Rome, Italy | |
| 2006 | Stereochrom, Gallery Denninger, Berlin, Germany |
| Kunstherbst Berlin, boulevART, Berlin, Germany | |
| Stadt, Gallery Denninger, Berlin, Germany | |
| 2004 | Sieben Stunden Malerei, Projekt Gallery Lang, Vienna, Austria |
| 2003 | Spezials, Gallery Oran, Dresden, Germany |
| Economy and Ecstasy, Raab Gallery, Berlin, Germany | |
| 2002 | Torsten Ruehle, Zoe, Florence, Italiy |
| 2001 | Die Blüten der Zeit, Zeughaus, Hamburg, Germany |
| Eröffnung, Galerie Oran, Dresden, Germany |
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