Opening Reception: From Darkness Comes Color

Born in 1983, Dominik Schmitt is a painter born to Neustadt, Germany. Every young artist today faces great challenges in view of the past centuries of art and art  history and the overwhelming diversity and possibilities found on the art market. How can I find my own way in this “jungle,” assert myself as an artist, and develop a characteristic and recognizable “handwriting”?

Dominik Schmitt creates pictures that are idiosyncratic in the best sense of the word, that catch the eye, that linger in the memory.  Pictures that the viewer cannot possibly grasp at first glance due to their complexity and  richness of detail. Should he nonetheless try to do so, he will be easily deceived. First of all, there is the dark coloration with a rich spectrum of broken black, gray, and earth tones, resulting in an unsettling and slightly melancholic basic mood. In terms of motifs, Schmitt’s  paintings confront us with glimpses into the inner workings of human and animal life.  Although the figurative dominates, the creatures in Schmitt’s pictorial world are always highly  idiosyncratic beings from an in between realm, located beyond reality. Again and again we  encounter amalgams of human and animal, often with limbs deformed or out of proportion.  They sometimes seem to almost jump out of the picture – possessing a terrible beauty and  fascination in their uniqueness, in their otherness. One might feel a bit transported to the  world of figures found on the capitals and among the gargoyles of Romanesque and Gothic churches, or in the depictions of hell of a Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Breughel – a playful  approach to the unfathomable and the frightening.