Ingo Meller

.
I guess this is as good a time as any to introduce you to Ingo Meller and what will seem like some very strange paintings. This guy's pretty cool because of his totally cerebral way of approaching painting. Ingo was born in 1955, lives in Cologne and studied in Germany with Eduardo Paolozzi and Daniel Spoerri. quote "His art education was centered on sculpture and the legacy of Marcel Duchamp. After graduating in the early 1980s, he received a grant from the German government and used it, oddly enough, to study old-master paintings firsthand. He traveled throughout Europe and the United States, visiting all the major museums. In a recent conversation, Meller told me that he tried to pay attention to how the paint looked in and of itself, independently of the image that it created." unquote. from BNET. This bit of information right here, is enough to make me pause and want to do some research. You can also read other short articles here and here.
But I digress.

Ingo's oeuvre is totally about 3 simple things; the canvas (linen), paint straight from the tube, and simple brush strokes. His unstretched and unframed canvases are cut about the size of a pillowcase and primed with transparent acrylic medium. (And eventually Velcroed to the walls.) He then loads his brush, which is about a fifth as wide as the canvas, with dollops of oil paint straight from the tube and proceeds to make his simple strokes, which are usually spare. The names of the paints become the titles of the paintings.

Personally, I've always had this "thing" for the names of paint. I'd much prefer to pick a paint (to buy or apply) solely on the merits of it's name and how it sounded or affected my emotions. There's many a painting where each of the colors used, were chosen because of the description or name on the tube. So for this particular aspect of his oeuvre, he's my hero. Actually I admire his whole train of thought; the way he's completely separated and respected the three basic components of painting. It's like he's giving equal respect to these elements by keeping it all to a very factual minimum.
.


The two images are from Galerie Nordenhake, where you'll find more images and info.
.

For seven other images of his work, go to Cheim & Read.
.

And for a lovely automatic slide show of a few of his works and a shot of his studio with the paints all lined up, go here.