Reinhard Stangl – The Bar as a Stage
Reinhard Stangl’s passion is colour, and he uses his pictures to show its rich diversity. The interior of his artists’ bar, covered in paintings, could almost be a gallery. The model for this atmosphere is Stangl’s own favourite bar: The Berlin Paris-Bar. Works by Julian Schnabel, Daniel Richter, or Markus Lüpertz can be found plastered across the walls here, alongside those of countless other international artists. Stangl’s images not only depict this atmosphere, one representative of countless similar meeting places in large cities, but also play with extreme colour.
An illustrious crowd populate the images at tables and counters, and are set against a background marked by intense oranges and reds. We are drawn to the people as “images within the image,” their clothes in particular standing out. These subjects are characterised not through their faces, but through their gestures and movements. Stangl is celebrating a world brought to life through painting, as if we might no longer separate the images from our daily lives. He seduces us into a world where companionship, art, and life are all intertwined.
The breath-taking simultaneousness of events is a notable characteristic of Stangl’s spectacular panorama “City Splash.” Expressive glances thrown into the bar and out onto the street flow into one another meaningfully. Stangl portrays different generations in a single, breathless narrative: Young teenagers are in the chaos of a techno dance scene, while next door an affluent bar crowd gesticulates. Other people sit back at tables, brooding, and appear detached and isolated. The viewer becomes a witness to a typical city scenario that comprises different social strata. The inspiration for the images came not only from the life of the neighbourhood in which Stangl lives in Berlin-Kreuzberg, but from also the vibrant impressions of other parts of the city.
Stangl uses his images to assemble and condense individual highlights from the city’s vibrant nightlife. They are displayed in a diverse, rhythmic composition – like a scene from a film. His paintings are, above all, an intensive palette of his emotions, free from shadows and characterised by strong colour contrasts.
| 1950 | Born in Leipzig, Germany |
| Apprenticeship as filmcopier, reprophotographer, stagecraftsman | |
| 1972-1977 | Studies of painting at University of the Arts, Dresden, Germany |
| 1989 | First Berlin Summeracademy, cofounder and lecturer, Berlin, Germany |
| 1990 | Visiting professor at University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany |
| 1993 | Visiting professor at Pentiment, University of the Arts, Hamburg, Germany |
| 1995 | Visiting professor at University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany |
| 1997 | Artistic leadership, Kunsthalle Luckenwalde, Germany |
| 1997 | Chairman of the Kunstförderverein Kunsthalle Luckenwalde, Germany |
| Lives and works as freelance artist in Berlin, Germany |
Exhibits (Selection)
| 2012 | Kittelschürze 2.0 und Fluch, Ausstellung, St. Petri, Lübeck |
| 2010 | Breakthrough - Projekt, 10 Berliner Künstler, John-Seigenthaler-Center, Washington D.C., USA |
| 2010 | Der schöne 5. August, Galerie Leo.Coppi, Berlin, Germany |
| 2010 | Breakthrough - Projekt, Edison-Place Gallery, Washington, Aspen-Institute, USA |
| 2009 | Landesmuseum Oldenburg, Germany |
| 2008 | Nacht und Tag, Galerie Leo.Coppi, Berlin, Germany |
| 2008 | Kunstverein Regensburg, Berliner Luft, Regensburg, Germany |
| 2007 | Salao de Arte, Hebraica, Sao Paulo, Brasilien |
| 2007 | Galerie Pomone, Lutry, Switzerland |
| 2007 | Der Fluch des Renegaten, San Lorenzo arte, Poppi, Italy |
| 2002 | Deutsch-Georgische Gesellschaft, Tiblissi, Georgien |
| 1998 | 100 Jahre Kunst im Aufbruch, Kunsthalle Bonn, Germany |
| 1996 | Trois artiste Berlinois, Carré Saint Anne, Montpellier, France |
| 1986 | Malstrom, Haus am Waldsee Berlin, Kunstverein Mannheim, Galerie Achenbach Amsterdam |
Books/Catalogs (Selection)
Reinhard Stangl: Bilder - Paintings, 1996 - 1999, Edition Rothes Haus, Schwetzingen, 1999
Reinhard Stangl: Nacht - Bilder, Edition Kronenberg, Berlin, 1996
Reinhard Stangl: Bilder von Landschaften 1990 - 1995, Edition Kronenberg, Berlin, 1996
Reinhard Stangl: L´art pour l´art - Bilder und Zeichnungen, Galerie Seyfferth Stahl, Berlin, 1995
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