David Ostrowski
Curated by
Blueproject Foundation
Cologne-based artist, David Ostrowski (b. 1981) has created an “oeuvre of paintings that comes almost eerily close to the idea of this kind of zero point, while simultaneously reminding us of the impossibility of ever truly getting there”, as Daniel Schreiber explains in a reference to Roland Barthes’ famous zero degree. “According to Barthes, every artwork always also conveys the illusions of the culture in which it was created and whose language it employs. The mesh of everyday myths is ineluctable, the thicket of codes impenetrable. And yet the desire for a zero point is vital. Without this desire, art would be inconceivable”, explains Schreiber.
“Ostrowski’s works arise from a forced elimination of painting knowledge and an expressed ambition to understand this idea of the void as a confrontation with the history of painting. With his confident and complex circumlocutions around the non-motif, Ostrowski succeeds in opening the space of the canvas to singular irruptions of perception, to an unexpected liberation of seeing” (Daniel Schreiber).