AndreaS SCHULZE

Andreas Schulze’s development of an autonomous and unmistakable visual language is the result of a focus on interior views of our society. Schulze was affiliated in the 1980s with the Junge Wilden and the Mülheimer Freiheit groups of artists in Cologne and Düsseldorf, which distanced themselves from conceptual art and, by means of spontaneous and extreme pictorial inventions, disregarded formal rules. Schulze’s concentration on an independent and anti-hierarchical use of traditional styles of painting is what links his painting with these artistic movements. Through his cool, analytical compositions and independent themes, however, he has retained a unique position that consistently marks him as a positive outsider within the context of contemporary art.
In his pictures, Schulze presents everyday landscapes and interior spaces that establish a comfortable yet menacing parallel to reality. With free treatment of various painting styles derived from Surrealism, Dadaism, or Abstract Expressionism, he paints suburbs, family houses, and living rooms that are painstakingly furnished with furniture, lamps, carpets, and porcelain objects.
Schulze’s paintings set worldly objects and ornamental decors in relation to each other, providing insights into ostensible idylls that move between the intellectual ambitions of bohemian circles and the normality of the middle class. A fundamental theme is the power of painting to create illusion, which the artist disrupts again and again. His spatial views and the objects they contain do not conceal the fact that they are fictional constellations and painted forgeries.