"SOMMERREISE" - 522 West 19th Street, New York

Explore the current exhibiton in 3D

Slag Gallery is pleased to present Sommerreise, recent paintings by Paul Wesenberg, on view for the first time at Slag & RX Galleries, from June 17 through July 24. Sommerreise is the artist's first solo exhibition in NYC.

Paul Wesenberg is a painter with a special interest in the materiality of paints and canvas. His approach reflects both the deeply considered foundations of his own position and the unbridled delight he takes in demonstrating—with maximum 0pulence—the ambition and autonomy of his paintings. His free-flowing forms—now abstract, now concrete, here chaotically agglomerated, there docilely linear, in some places densely impastoed, in others blithely fluid—turn his paintings into sensory events.

Recently Paul Wesenberg has allowed his paintings to expand into the space around them, either by means of boxes (Painter's Garden, 2018) or (as in his Magical Paintings, 2019) by allowing the paint skin to float if directed by a magical hand. The raised section of paint skin forms a rupture; it leaves a material defect. And lurking underneath the raised area, there is nothingness. Profound meaning is an emotional category, which Wesenberg addresses via his fascinatingly conceived surface structures.

-Christoph Tannert Berlin, 2020