Carsten Fock

The painter Carsten Fock (*1968, lives and works in Berlin) works with styles that are shaped by the material he uses and his mode of painting and overpainting which always remains visible. His acrylic paintings, for instance, are in part reminiscent of graffiti, silhouettes or screen prints due to their sketchiness and conciseness, yet they expand these associations and, as paintings, mark the traces remaining of a socially shaped subject who leaves a mark and expresses himself. He frequently integrates in a sketchy manner portraits of popular personalities in his pictures, partially overpainting them, leaving areas untreated, defamiliarizing them, and thus adding to the associations he gives rise to in stylistic and technical terms content-related ones, which together reveal a reflected relation to the present, albeit one that is without an apparent motive. He adds an additional level to the ones already layered, as the contentual application of media-related conditions of painting, namely the element of text, which is overtaxed in its appellative function. Painted texts repeatedly emerge from the layers of colour: song lyrics, statements, quotes from pop culture and advertising, as well as his own fragmented sentences. They, too, are clearly outlined following the typography of poster prints, at times overpainted again and then transformed to graphemes that disrupt the semantic level. All this results in a degree of fragmentation and simultaneous superimposition that attracts the viewer's attention and sets the process of drawing and signifying in motion. Messages disappear and others appear; segments are corrected or blackened; the picture's structure is rendered uncertain through the layers inherent to the image - it becomes a stasis of visible temporality captured in a moment of instability.

In his felt pen drawings, the text is also frequently hidden in the two-dimensionality and coloration. Through the application of colour using the felt-tip pen, the individual strokes remaining visible, Fock lends these pictures a process-like character, that of something made in the intermediate stage of fine shadings. The themes are similar to the ones in his paintings: portraits, silhouettes, military subjects, lonesomeness. Fock gives his pictures a smouldering yet strong and at times politicizing message, not only due to the motifs, but also by adding phrases such as "But please fuck the System", which can at times be read only upon second sight or that shimmer through as a rest forgotten by time and its layerings - as what remains of an enunciation that was once more than a surface embellished by stereotyped phrases.

Carsten Fock, "o.T"., 2006, crayon on paper, 29,7 x 21 cm

Curriculum vitae

Carsten Fock, "o.T.", 2006, crayon and laquer pen on paper, 42,0 x 29,7 cm

Carsten Fock, "o.T.", 2006, ballpen on paper, 29,7 x 21 cm

Carsten Fock, "o.T.", 2006, resin on cotton, 150 x 130 cm

Solo Exhibitions (Selection)

Group Exhibitions (Selection)