Seed of Calamity | Exhibition in the 15th Nidbach Series

Uri Stahl is mostly engaged with painting, but he does not restrict himself to this media alone. Stretched canvases are of equal value as small cloth napkins attached to jar lids, or wooden crosses stained with paint that he has come across. In his paintings he searches for the delicate position between horror and calamity and naïve fantasy. He stretches the boundaries of the painted surfaces to the point where pleasure turns into pain and where suffering is full of gentleness. Stahl mixes into his work materials from life These might not be your lives, but they are definitely his own: young boys’ female idols stretched out on cars on a roadside; hares or rabbits in nature; childhood monsters threatening golden-haired, ice-cold princesses.
Stahl is deeply acquainted with the history of art. He has also familiarized himself and assimilated the critical discourse. Uri also knows how to paint, but he would not let any weight become a burden on his feet. In his painting – as in the music he creates – everything mixes into a sweet noise, into a private regularity of his own – a language swallowed with lust.