Mirko Schallenberg –
Geometrie des Zufalls
Mirko Schallenberg's paintings are modern still lifes. At first glance, the artist's keen sense for materiality and balanced compositions, materiality and spatiality is recognizable. He paints objects from his own extensive collection of materials and puts them together in a new con- text. Sketches and the creation of a three-dimensional model precede the works. The model serves the artist only as a test of the picture idea, not to be painted. The painting style is realistic; he places his representational protagonists in a deliberate interaction with meticulous, impressive care. The real feature of his paintings is the constructed arrangement.
Vanitas motifs as a reminder of the transience of existence. The objects in the picture enter into relationship with each other and interact, in contrast to the classical still life. Through the enlargement of the depicted objects, reality also shifts in terms of content. Contrasts are one of Mirko Schallenberg's stylistic devices. Rough wood meets a mirror in a painting, a stone meets milk, transparency meets materiality. The same motifs can be found in his paintings over the years, such as jugs, glass vases, stones, cardboard boxes, candles, but also smaller creatures, flora and fauna. What changes is the context, the motifs are not to be understood as a metaphor, they are defined by the constellation of the pictorial objects.
The very aesthetically and skillfully arranged everyday objects are executed in powerful and material haptics and enter into a relationship with each other. A constructive, metaphysical painting that deals with the mysteries of our reality. This is further supported by the matte coloration prevalent in the painting, which makes the images appear calm and balanced. Objects are given a perspective of meaning, their proportionate size resulting from the context of the image. The objects themselves have a strong physical presence, the pictorial composition is abstracted in that the artist pays particular attention to the painterly relationships between them, in addition to the individual objects.
Mirko Schallenberg's paintings are charged with tension, their legibility oscillates between stability and fragility, the familiar and the uncertain. The cons- truct of objects is held together by an inner tension, but this cohesion is deceptive. At any moment it can break apart. Mirko Schallenberg preserves this moment in his paintings: "I want you to be able to trust your eyes, to trust your senses, even your own subconscious."
