Florin
Kompatscher’s eleventh solo exhibition at Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman presents recent works from the years 2019 and
2020. For this new series the artist has designed an immersive exhibition setting. The playful title
COMIX & ATLANTIX refers to the book Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, a collection of short stories in
which a figure called QFWFQ, transcending history and time, illustrates the temporal and spatial
development of everything emerging and being in the shape of memories. Scientific, mainly
astronomical concepts inspired Calvino in his telling of surreal and funny stories.
In his painting, Florin Kompatscher has always been generating bizarrely aesthetic dream worlds
that are impossible to narrow down stylistically. The painting style appears to emerge from the
subconscious and to hark back to surrealism, while the atmospheric dissolving of colour is
reminiscent of impressionism. Especially in the new work series, the serene playfulness of the
composition comes across almost baroque, very dynamic and also cheerful in the choice of colours.
The fact that the images won’t be confined to the space of the canvas, but interact beyond it with
the gallery walls, further increases the series’ vividness and lets the observer delve deeper into the
artist’s fantastic universe.
Or, to use his own words:
You have to have the courage and the will to let yourself in, in order to be able to move freely inside. Different doors
thus open for everyone and it can become a real adventure. The connotations, however, are left to the respective observer.
This is all about the endless possibilities of painting.
Florin Kompatscher in conversation with Gerald Matt on the occasion of the exhibition Vom
Hunger nach Bildern at Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman in Innsbruck, in October 2018.
Florin Kompatscher, born in Bolzano, Italy, in 1960, studied with Carl Unger and Adolf Frohner at the
Academy of Applies Arts in Vienna from 1981 to 1986. Since then, he has had numerous international
exhibitions, which left a lasting echo in the public mind not least for many a catchy title, such as Genie
out of the bottle (Haverkampf, Berlin, 2018), schleie farbe lief (Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman Vienna,
2018), Fluss ohne Ufer (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2018), Trip de Roche (Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman,
2012), Der Himmel hatte Fieber (Kunstverein Offenburg-Mittelbaden, 2012), Wake Up Before You Go Purple
(Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich, 2010), Die Scherbe des Himmels (Galerie Strickner, Vienna, 2010), My
Brain is on an Elevator (Galerie Eva Bracke, Berlin, 2009), Der scharfe Rand der Erde (Galerie Elisabeth &
Klaus Thoman Innsbruck, 2008), Purple & Asphalt (Forum Kunst, Rottweil, 2007), Alles Andere ist wahr
(Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, 2006), Die Lange Heimat (Kunstverein Heilbronn,
2006), or dumdidldauda (kjubh Kunstverein, Cologne, 2002), to mention but a few. Following several
stays abroad, in Rome, Madrid, and Paris, each lasting for several years, Florin Kompatscher, together
with his wife Maria Brunner, has been living in Berlin since 2003.
