Matthias Weischer

Background

Matthias Weischer was born in 1973 in Rheine, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

Education

In 2000 Matthias Weischer received Bachelor of Arts in Painting at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Three years later he earned Master of Arts there, attending the class of Sighard Gille.

Career

In Leipzig, Matthias Weischer encountered like-minded artists with whom he was to create a stir in the late 1990s under the New Leipzig School label. The artists considered to belong to that group – including Neo Rauch, David Schnell, and Martin Kobe – are conspicuous primarily for the theatrical nature of their paintings and their giant canvases. Weischer’s early works show age-worn interiors and forgotten studios frozen in time.

Following a residency at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 2007, interesting changes occurred in Weischer’s work. He began to paint more freely, intuitively and spontaneously and the paintings became smaller and more poetic. No longer filled with different objects, they became focused on single subjects, such as a tree trunk, a cloth or a skull. The colors he used at this time were reminiscent of Italian frescos. Paneele, a painting from the museum’s own collection, illustrates this development in a particularly interesting way, since it was begun in 2006 but not completed until 2008.

The Gemeentemuseum held an exhibition of Weischer’s work as long ago as 2008. Continuing to explore new techniques, Weischer still paints large, semi-ornamental depictions of interiors, parks or gardens but increasingly dares to omit figurative elements, although his art is never completely abstract. In 2011 he also discovered ‘pulp painting’: refined paper pulp colored in advance and applied to a paper support using big pipettes.

Weischer began to explore it in collaboration with Gangolf Ulbricht in Berlin and Sue Gosin in New York, sometimes in combination with other techniques such as silkscreen. Pulp painting forces him to work quickly and there is little room for error. His shows include "Booth", created in 2013, a pulp painting recently acquired by the Gemeentemuseum, and several other works in which he continues to experiment with this technique. Weischer is bringing these straight from his studio.

Among the collections holding Matthias Weischer’s work are the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague; Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig; Rubel Family Collection, Miami and Susan and Michael Hort, New York. Matthias Weischer currently lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.

Achievements

Weischer is one of the best young artists coming from Eastern Germany, recognized both in Germany and in the world. He is best known for his depictions of empty domestic interiors that create an illusory space of flatness and depth.

Works

painting
- Interior
- House
- Egyptian Room
- Chair
- Automat
- Living Room
- Zimmer
- Familie 0-Mittag
- Untitled
- Untitled 11
- Untitled

Views

Weischer describes his paintings as places where the perceptual and the possible meet. Matthias travels to a landscape to get acknowledged with the details. Not to replicate them, but to get the motivation needed to turn something natural into something artificial.

Membership

Matthias came to international attention in the early 21st Century as a member of the Leipzig School – a movement credited with spearheading the revival of figurative painting.

Connections

tutor:: Sighard Gille
colleague:: Christoph Ruckhaberle
colleague:: Tim Eitel
colleague:: David Schnell
colleague:: Tom Fabritius

Main Photo