Andreas Chwatal creates self-contained worlds of imagery in which references to art history merge with analogies to pop culture, and personal perceptions amalgamate with social observations on large narrations. Attractive and unfathomable at the same time, his works can be read as pensive commentaries on the contemporary world. At the heart of it all is the specific interest in beauty that drives Chwatal. Besides erotic moments and bodies, ornamental motifs and landscapes, one is also presented with scenes of the banal and the ugly. Human abysses, neuroses and fears are assimilated into works, existing in antagonism to the beauty of their presentation.
„My drawings, collages and ceramics deal with an alternation of intimacy, fetish, twosomeness, group affiliation, dating, gay longings, meditative contemplation and reverie, as well as a sense of beauty and the play with styles. The new body of work I am currently creating here in New York for Paris, tells of my personal relationships with and in the city. Erotic encounters and friendly conversations are being transformed into a tableau of individual development and social togetherness in the light of the queer self- image of this melting pot. The sensual stimulus as well as the vulnerability that unites the selected works, echoes the complex network of liaisons of the metropolis’ inhabitants.“
Andreas Chwatal, New York City (2024)
