Christoph Schmidberger

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view per Wikipedia policy.
Mark blatant advertising for speedy deletion with {{db-spam}}. (help, talk)

Christoph Schmidberger (b.1974, Eisenerz, Austria) is a painter based in Los Angeles.

Schmidberger studied from 1989-1994 at the Higher Technical College of Graphic Art in Graz, Austria, and graduated with an Honours and Master of Art from the Academy of Fine Art [1]in Vienna in 2002.

Schmidberger’s work has been shown internationally at galleries and museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego [2], the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art [3] in California, the Landesmuseum Joanneum [4] in Graz, and The Royal Academy [5] in London. His work features in several important collections including the Saatchi Gallery [6], the Los Angeles County Museum of Art [7], the Joslyn Museum of Art [8], and Österreichische Galerie Belvedere [9]. He is represented by Mark Moore Gallery [10] in Los Angeles and Goff + Rosenthal Gallery [11] in New York.

Christoph Schmidberger follows in the lusty decadence of Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard. In his approach to portraiture, Schmidberger embarks upon the erotic, creating sumptuous canvases where antiquated flirtation meets porn. Using historical compositional devices, Schmidberger’s modern demoiselles, flanneurs and nymphs luxuriate in contemporary surroundings. They are rendered with hyper-sensitive realism, and Schmidberger’s work addresses the resurrection of painting in relation to photography. Exchanging the dramatic pastels of Rococo painting for the acidic hues of film, and framing his scenes with casual B-movie ambience, Schmidberger contrives romanticism with a hefty dose of kitsch.

Throughout Schmidberger’s work is an engagement with the Sublime: his consuming beauty is inseparable from horror. Figures recline with corpse-like passivity, and dogs – traditionally symbolic of fidelity and love – insinuate a repulsive carnality. Infusing the seedy with a baroque indulgence, Schmidberger construes sexuality and violence as sensuous delight. Broaching youth-culture irony with frivolous innocence, Schmidberger updates the grand themes of the literary Decadence period, examining the mores of jouissance, passion and death in relation to contemporary experience.