Andreas Orsini-Rosenberg. good news, my darling
In his solo exhibition good news, my darling at Loft8 Austrian artist Andreas Orsini-Rosenberg presents two distinctive series from his multi-faceted oeuvre. His artistic production is characteristic of his constant experiments with diverse techniques. In the exhibition at Loft8 he shows two of his signature techniques – so-called coincidence cardboards and glass collages.
Working with the simplest methods and materials is typical of Orsini-Rosenberg. In his artworks he assembles and recycles what could be perceived as trash by the others, such as broken bike reflectors or shards from various advertisement materials. Paradoxically, the sources of his inspiration vary from 14th to 16th-century Italian and Dutch painting to Viennese baroque architecture. He is enchanted by their spiritual quality and harmony of their formal elements, such as colours and composition or in the case of baroque architecture with the opulence of more or less symmetrical and theatrical shapes.
Collage has without doubt became his favourite technique, in all its manifestations of its technical rendering and material variety. He constantly reinvents something new out of older images, found materials or recurring ideas. He assembles and collages the fragments of the world, which one can never compass in its full complexity. As he says, he creates paintings/painterly pictures without using a brush.
good news, my darling presents two series contrasting by impression. Qualities of glass like transparency and fragility are exhibited in opposition to the rough and covering nature of cardboard. A characteristic Viennese baroque architectural element – an oval shape – appears here only to trap the layered pieces of contemporary visual information, which seemingly try to expand through the liquid borders of glass slabs. On the other hand, coincidence cardboards build various ensembles of colours and forms in strictly rectangular shape of cardboard sheet, which resemble a landscape of disparate thoughts.