exhibition

CHRISTIAN MöLLER - Judgement Day

Christian Moeller

22.Feb.08 - 16.Mar.08
Wed-Sat 12-6, check website
£ -, - advance, - concession

Private View, 21.Feb.08, 6-9
Private View, 21.Feb.08, 6-9 pm

Vegas Gallery
64-66 Redchurch Street
London E2 7DP
07726750762 / 02077294819
hello@vegasgallery.co.uk
www.vegasgallery.co.uk
Tube Liverpool Street, Old Street, Aldgate East, Shoreditch / Hoxton

"My world is small but my universe is huge" (Christian Möller)

Berlin based artist Christian Möller trained at the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe by Horst Antes and has exhibited extensively throughout Germany, and also in Lisbon, Prague and Los Angeles. Christian's paintings can be seen as visual manifestations of the deepest repressed emotions and darkest experiences which lie at the heart of the human psyche. Drawing inspiration from what he calls "the mental abyss of human existence", Christian strives to make the invisible visible.

Christian Möller's huge canvases serve as a startling reminder of our own diminitive position in relation to the universe. Loneliness, destruction, pain and chaos confront us with uncompromising force. Titles such as "And Once Again a Day Closer to the Grave" and "New From the Land of Grudge and Why the Graves Are Always Filled With Optimists" are perhaps a nod to Samuel Beckett's extensential masterwork Waiting For Godot:

"Astride the grave and a difficult birth.
Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.
We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries."

However unsettling, these large and malevolent canvases loom before us, attracting us rather than repelling. They exert an exotic attraction, luring us deep into the abyss. The act of looking has never been less passive. This work demands our engagement: we must move around, stepping backward and forward and left and right, as we navigate our way around the painting, but our effort is certainly rewarded. We are able to discern a richness and depth in the midst of the darkness. Möller says: "I allow a form more freedom if I do not evaluate it with colours", and we see that the engulfing blackness is puncuated with tantalising strokes of white and layer upon layer of grey tones: mysterious forms begin to emerge before us. The frenzied brushstrokes represent an interior stream-of-consciousness laid bare upon the canvas, which is transformed into a stage upon which the subconcious plays. Gradually, the manic strokes converge before our eyes to form a coherent and cathathic whole.

To look is to embark with Christian Möller upon a journey from which we emerge slightly shaken, but with a greater knowledge of ourselves and of the human condition.

-Text by Kerry Edwards