Stefanie Gutheil

Der Neuling, 2009, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 90 x 90 inches

Wasserman, 2009, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 79 x 98 inches

Cow, 2010, oil and textile on canvas, 75 x 63 inches

Big Cat Squeezing, 2011, oil and fabric on canvas, 110 1/4 x 157 1/2 inches

KINGOKONGO, 2011, oil, fabric, foil, latex and hair on canvas, 110 1/4 x 157 1/2 inches

Master Eaten by a Monster and His Dog, 2010, oil on canvas, 75 x 63 inches

Downstairs Party, 2010, oil, textile and foil on canvas, 110.24 × 157.48 inches

Lazerpussy, 2011, oil, acrylic, fabric, foil, and mixed media on canvas, 94 1/2 x 81 1/8 inches

Labyrinth, 2009, oil and mixed media on canvas, 90 1/2 x 90 1/2 inches

Family Portrait, 2011, oil and textile on canvas, 71 5/8 x 78 3/4 inches

Artist Bio

Stefanie Gutheil (b. 1980, Ravensburg, Germany) obtained her B.A from the Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany and her MFA from the same instituion in 2007. She has had solo shows in Germany, France, Portugal, Canada and the Us. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany

About the Artist

Gutheil brings the anxiety-provoking monsters of traditional German Expressionism into a lighter, more playful realm. Exotic shapes and patterns mingle with undefined, chromatic impastos that surge in charged pyrotechnics toward the forefront of the picture plane. She mixes flat, outlined graphic configurations with modeled animal and human figures, a process that results in an eerie pastiche of the comic book and the naturalistic, a panoramic range of expression. Scale is another boundary that Gutheil crosses; the gigantic and the miniscule are mixed in a merry interchange that tweaks viewer expectations of dimensional uniformity. Gutheil depicts herself in her paintings as a re-designed humanoid with long toes and a long nose, a witness to the boisterous events that unfold. Her wit spares no one of her acquaintance, from family and friends to acquaintances, as she expresses her piercing Goya-like intuitions on the human frailties that she perceives and transforms.

The artist is a powerhouse whose bold inventions include pink rats, deformed pigs, outsized cats, and Bosch on acid hybrids; they all play their parts in the nightmare drama. Staged with maximum trappings, unexpected actions and diversions are inserted into these grand scale, frontal formats. In Party Downstairs, spilled buckets of colorful paint cascade like a waterfall in what seems a salute to the art of painting itself, highlighting maximum energy, imagination, lack of inhibition, and bravura in the creative process. There is a price to these heroic exploits; the piece expresses the exhaustion of the aftermath. Gutheil transports the shadows of horror into dim light as she articulates the bizarre phantoms that invade her dreams. By enunciating these manifestations she subdues their dusky undercurrents. (Mary Hrbacek, N Arts)

Stefanie Gutheil at Mike Weiss Gallery

Posted by Carmelita Caruana