Till Freiwald

Studio Cannaviello, Milan
Through November 14

It’s almost impossible nowadays to come across something truly new in the field of painting. In most cases, therefore, an artist seeks to develop his own technique – or signature style – based on the minimal differences between his work and that of other artists working in the same vein, whether predecessor or contemporary. Till Freiwald, a young German living in St. Etienne, France, has chiseled a niche for himself in a particular line of portraiture. He depicts faces close up, in a manner reminiscent of photography’s sharp, inexpressive objectivity.

It was Andy Warhol, of course, who first dealt with the anonymous aesthetic quality of passport photography. But Freiwald has other predecessors. American hyperrealist painter Chuck Close was already painting enormous black and white portraits at the end of the 1960s. And, with the dawn of the 1980s, came Thomas Ruff’s cibachrome work.

The originality of Freiwald’s painting isn’t obvious at first sight. The large, front-facing countenances of these young people seem similar to many other works. Observing them with the attention they deserve, however, we realize that they have a softness of tone and an internal luminosity that is a world away from the frozen, optical precision of Ruff’s photography. This delicacy of visual effect derives from Freiwald’s handling of a medium he has truly mastered: watercolor.

Most striking is his application of paint with a lightness and transparency, able nonetheless to render the subject’s physiognomy with surprising plasticity. The result is a singular, alienating aesthetic tension.

It seems as though, in many ways, the length of the creative process involved inspires the visitor to study the painted surface with a degree of calm concentration; to take a contemplative approach. In so doing, the gaze of these still, silent characters staring down on us penetrates ever further to become, at times, almost unsettling.




Francesco Poli
Translation by Rosalind Furness