Cornelius Völker

these paintings by German artist Cornelius Völker look good enough to eat, if you can say that about hair… it does make me want to be more dramatic with my hair-dos. a good new year’s resolution?

With a distinctive method of handling paint that is simultaneously fluid and precise, German artist Cornelius Völker chooses traditional genres – the still-life and portraiture – to explore and decode the history of representational painting. Frequently involving subject matter that was used by painters for centuries to best exhibit their proficiency – hair, hands, flesh, glass, food – Völker’s works blur traditional distinctions between genres, each painting becoming both a still life and a portrait. Whether or not actually figurative, nearly every work that Völker paints refers to the body: pills to ingest, ointments to rub into the skin, viscous fluids, cigarette stubs or half eaten fruit.

quotes courtesy of Hosfelt Gallery, images courtesy of Artsy and Galerie Klaus Gerrit Friese.