Michael Laube

15 years ago Michael Laube took a leave from all arbitrary forms. The line became the medium and mediator of his works. And although it seems like a contradiction, this decision proofed as a great freedom for endless variations. He stuck to his favored material acrylic glass for his multilayered works always exploring spatial relations. He calls this technique „create and hide“ and emphasizes that a playful approach remains essential to the developing process. Starting from a base plate the areas and fields start to interact but meanwhile glass stays as a visible medium. Upon the layers he combines hard edge painting and more gestic painting techniques which canalize through the element of the line.

Recently Michael Laube started to evolve a new body of work which opens a new field of expression by consciously leaving the accustomed line. The new works are eruptive, unused and give more space to free association but without heading towards definite interpretation. Precursor to his new series is a work which reaches outside of his habitual genre the painting. With „10-11“ he crosses the borders to sculpture and slowly allows more organic forms to enter his repertoire. Starting from this point the forms free themselves into usual sizes and develop a new ability which begins to show in works like „27-11“. The pictoral invention of the new works proofs itself unlike harder and the developing process prolongs to many times of the amount. Unexpectedly the once freed forms are harder to manage and to combine. But his approved way of working, his iterative method and almost unnoticeable flaws of the painterly process are also the essence of this new body of work.

In his current show „STRAY LIGHT“ Michael Laube ventures the juxtaposition of both bodies of work. In the clash of both series similarities and distinctions get enhanced and may answer the question of future orientation. The line was, is and will be a part of his aesthetic instrument and now gets accompanied by his new vocabulary of forms. It´s a journey to an unknown county for Michael Laube. Linked to new impressions, unaccustomed discernments, foreign paths or familiar signs and carried by the delight of experiment and traveling without a guide.