Whimsical Reveries

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Tang+Yao collaborates with Shenzhen-based gallery Kenna Xu to co-curate the group exhibition "Whimsical Reveries", featuring paintings by artists Alina Birkner, Ingrid Floss, Jean-Yves Klein, Otto Reitsperger, and Franz Türtscher.

This exhibition focuses on the most surface and immediate connections between formal elements such as color, shape, and line in painting and the canvas itself. Color in these works exhibits extraordinary allure, serving as a bridge that connects diverse regions and cultural backgrounds. The five artists, hailing from different countries and regions, converge here with their distinct styles, endeavoring to reflect their individual grasp of color, form, texture, and emotion in painting within their respective temporal and spatial contexts, as well as their exploration of immediacy and presence. Together, they create a "Whimsical Reverie" unique to abstract painting.

Alina Birkner, born in Munich, Germany, in 1989, studied and advanced her education at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich under the tutelage of Jean-Marc Bustamante. Living and working in Munich, she is currently one of the most internationally acclaimed young contemporary artists. The symbolic use of the spiral is a core element in Birkner's works; the artist regards the spiral as a synonym for rebirth and the passage of life. In Untitled (Happy Balance), two blue dots equally divide the visual center of gravity, with soft pale pink and tender yellow gently diffusing, rotating, and resonating outward in a tranquil manner, forming an oval shape that reaches the edges of the canvas until constrained by orange-yellow hues. In Untitled (Gentle Uterus), nearly spherical soft color lines lead those colors commonly defined as feminine—such as sky blue, light pink, pale purple, and tender yellow. The two-dimensional canvas is transformed by the artist into an ambiguous organic entity, where bright and cheerful colors achieve a naturalistic consensus on the canvas. This work signifies the artist's exploration of feminine atmospheres using abstract colors, inviting viewers into a more ethereal visual space.

Ingrid Floss, born in Cologne, Germany, in 1970, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. Since 2011, she has been teaching at the Bad Reichenhall Art Academy. In the same year, she co-founded the "Color Laboratory" at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich with Rupprecht Geiger and Jerry Zeniuk. In 2012, she taught at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in China. Her works are widely collected by art institutions in Germany and China. As an artist focused on color research, color itself has become the theme of Ingrid Floss's creations. Floss once described her understanding of color: "I love painting and color because they belong to me; they are my language and life. Looking at them can awaken a feeling, an experience, a satisfaction, and then they return to an unconscious state, becoming a memory." In works such as Elins, Spatial, and Lilith, her colors appear violent and emotional, directly and sharply touching the viewer, possessing a distinct immediacy and presence. These colors, along with bold brushstrokes, intensely stimulate the viewer's visual experience, allowing one to feel the deliberately crafted sense of "disorder" between the strokes and pigments. In works like Free Roaming pictures, the chaos that erupts after breaking the order is cleverly blended into the canvas by the artist. Floss turns color into a "mystery"; it seems that the color blocks and stripes have lost their inherent order and structure within the canvas, yet they reorganize to form a new harmony.

Jean-Yves Klein, born in Montreal, Canada, in 1960, studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1980 and obtained a master's degree from the Berlin University of the Arts (HdK) in 1986. A recipient of numerous accolades, Klein was awarded the Emerging Artist Grant in 1987 and was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the Berlin Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 1992. His artworks are included in the collections of several art institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He currently lives and works in Berlin and the Peloponnese. Deeply influenced by German Neo-Expressionism, Klein adeptly employs highly expressive colors and contours to captivate the viewer's attention. In his work Super Hero, colors are placed within contours outlined by black lines that sketch the facial features of the superhero. While viewers cannot discern more detailed figurative features, they can clearly recognize the portrait as one with strong Expressionist characteristics. Superheroes are undoubtedly mythical figures artificially assembled by the entertainment industry—a collage of various virtues. Their names are clear, yet their appearances are blurred, much like how Klein utilizes color and contour in his paintings. The abstract and the figurative are not distinctly separated in his works but rather exhibit a more ambiguous stance—a vague yet deeply memorable impression.

Otto Reitsperger, born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1955, graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and has long lived and worked in Berlin. Reitsperger's works vividly display characteristics of Bach's music, namely the relationship between musical structure and emotional depth. His pieces present an illusion of spatial expansion through linear framework elements, with adjacent, alternating color blocks echoing the rigorous logic found in Bach's compositions. In paintings like RB 2018-27 and RB 2018-29, Reitsperger's use of linear frameworks generates the illusion of spatial expansion, where the combination of color blocks on a two-dimensional plane exhibits an elegant dynamism under his depiction. In Trompe L’oeil RB 2012-29, within a harmonious color palette, Reitsperger creates both horizontal and vertical visual extensions, allowing viewers to experience a three-dimensional sensation through their gaze. In his visual language, the organic combination of pictorial structure and sensory emotional content, along with his treatment of color, grants the artwork a new visual dimension, revealing infinite possibilities beneath the surface of things.

Franz Türtscher, born in Dornbirn, Austria, in 1953, graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and currently lives and works in Vienna. Türtscher's creative endeavors span conceptual painting, space-related painting, abstract painting, as well as objects and installations. His works are included in collections such as the Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Federal Ministry of Education and Art in Vienna, the Federal Ministry of Fine Arts in Vienna, and the Vorarlberg State Museum. Verticality and horizontality are two key elements in Franz Türtscher's works. The vertical plumb line and the horizontal horizon serve as reference points in his creations. Based on these two elements, he defines his own creative rules and constructs two opposing yet counterbalancing facets—his works can only be created or deconstructed within predetermined grids, thereby redefining visual language. Within seemingly contradictory creative rules, the rhythm hidden beneath the surface of color and composition is the core of Türtscher's visual design. In Contrasts Colour Vision, No.c 1：21, he presents the variability and processuality of general order patterns through the combination of a series of partial images following the principle of continuous expression, rendering an abstract visualization. In Contrasts Colour Vision, colors are continuously decomposed and compressed into strip forms, and through the use of contrasting hues, a visual alliance of lines is formed. The virtual interaction of colors is presented on the canvas, endowing the work with a dynamic sense of flow, symbolizing heterogeneity, complexity, and dynamism based on the fundamental forms of material diversity in life. Colors traverse between cold and warm spectrums, with the convergence and release of the painting's inherent emotions directly displayed on the canvas. On one side lies structure, framework, and form—absolute rationality, absolute order, absolute objectivity; on the other side, absolute freedom, absolute purity, absolute idealism. The two exist at mutually opposing yet interconnected poles.