The Works of Cornelius Volker: Art Exhibit | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

In his first solo exhibition on the West Coast, German artist Cornelius Volker, painting with extraordinary prowess and sensuality as well as uncanny awareness and insight, chooses traditional genres – the still life and portrait – to explore and decode the history of representational painting.

Frequently choosing subject matter that was used by painters for centuries to best exhibit their proficiency – hair, hands, flesh, glass, food – Volker’s works blur traditional distinctions between genres, each painting becoming both a still life and a portrait. Isolated in a painterly void, a stack of books reads as a standing figure while art catalogues left open, pages bristling with post-it bookmarks, recline like Titian’s “Venus of Urbino.” The back of a woman’s head, with an elaborate coiffure, is a coil of rope or a golden loaf of twisted bread.

Whether or not actually figurative, nearly every work that Volker paints refers to the body: pills to ingest, ointments to rub into the skin, viscous fluids, cigarette stubs or half eaten fruit. A plate of oysters, in its similarity to female genitalia, points both to the origin of their alleged power as aphrodisiacs and to Dutch painters’ use of food and flowers to refer to the brevity of human life. The stub end of a candle reminds us of Macbeth’s soliloquy and that life’s ultimate conclusion is entropy and death.

This survey of work from the last fifteen years reveals a consummate painter who masterfully plays on diverse historical precedents. Painting, though declared dead in 1839 by Paul Delaroche and frequently reasserted ever since, continues to enchant us perhaps like no other medium. In the hands of an artist as knowledgeable and skilled as Volker, it’s easy to see why.

17 October – 5 December; Reception 17 October 4-6 pm; Gallery Hours Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat: 10am – 5:30pm; Thurs: 11am – 7pm Presented by Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco

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