One of the things Silverman Gallery does best is showcase artists from Europe that would otherwise go unseen in the Bay Area, and the current show of work by Volker Eichelmann and Florian Schmidt is an excellent example. Both are young artists based out of London for Eichelmann and then Berlin and Vienna for Schmidt, and juxtaposed in the gallery their work stimulates thoughts about collage and construction. Eichelmann's larger mixed media pieces (one pictured here) are the initial eye-catchers, messy swirls of paint with ragged text and phrases pasted on top. A series of his smaller collages are also on display, Proposals for Sculptures and Buildings, and they are more precise but with plenty of surreal touches. A mask fountain spouts water out of its mouth, and a lakeside shopping mall seems to be rocketing out of the landscape. Those carefully-placed details connect to Schmidt's work, whose "canvases" consist of geometries of color that have not only been painted but literally nailed and stapled together with his processes left exposed to the viewer. Some of his pieces burst off of the wall and into another dimension, wood and paint forming loose assemblages that seem to be only barely hanging together. Schmidt's architectural interests are emphasized by two simple structures that have been constructed out of wood just to either side of the front door, through which you have to lean to see more of his art. There is a nice contrast between fantasy and formalism in the two artists' work, and I was drawn to the undercurrent of idealism in Eichelmann's collages as well as to Schmidt's transparency.
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