Mysterious - Leif Trenkler
Images of the Exhibition
Description
We are delighted to present the first solo exhibition of Leif Trenkler at our gallery in Landshut. Titled "Mysterious," the show features a selection of works from Trenkler’s current creative output.
Born in 1960 in Wiesbaden, Leif Trenkler studied painting at the prestigious academies in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, where he was a student of, among others, Thomas Bayrle and Jörg Immendorff. He is considered a key representative of the New Figuration movement in Germany. His works continue to be shown in numerous exhibitions and are part of many collections.
Leif Trenkler is equally a conceptual and painterly guide and escapist. In his pictorial worlds, he plays with our deep-seated longing for a carefree life and lingering in idyllic, earthly paradises—creating an escape from the hectic routine of a largely standardized everyday life into an alternate world of mindful idleness. The harmoniously composed motifs captivate the viewer and transport us, if only for a moment, to tropical landscapes and dream beaches, to joyful scenes from the land of unlimited possibilities, and to Mediterranean summer residences in that fabled land where, as the saying goes, the lemons bloom.
Water and pool landscapes with splendid bungalows and villa architecture—set within an impressive natural environment of reeds, palm trees, orchids, and cedars—combine with a deliberately heightened, candy-colored palette full of striking contrasts. Together, they form a counterpoint to the drabness of daily life and invite the imagination to indulge in carefree dreams. These places are often devoid of people, and where figures do appear, they function as scenery or placeholders for personal identification. The images thus become projection surfaces for individual escape plans and the possibilities that await us. And yet, at other times, one feels like a lottery-playing onlooker catching a glimpse of the vacant, unused residences of the beautiful and wealthy—residences that can also appear as golden cages of lived isolation, sealed off from the world.
Trenkler’s presented scenes seem strangely alienated and detached. Like dream images, they embody a constructed model-like character that alludes to reality without depicting it in literal “detail.” His figurative compositions consciously intensify representational content with the alienating effects of abstraction. The appearance of his motifs emerges from a mix of finely detailed and color-nuanced passages—especially noticeable in the fragments of nature rendered in various shades of green, accurately reflecting light and shadow play. Trenkler combines these with sharply contoured, uniformly designed color fields, such as those used for skies, flat roofs, walls, and floor slabs. Here, color asserts itself through its tonal value alone—constructional details fade, shadows as references to reality are sometimes missing or take on an intentionally schematic, stylized form, developing a painterly life of their own that transcends the impression of realism.
Dr. Veit Ziegelmaier
