Visual inspection

Gerard Mas, sculptures and portrait busts (to the exhibits)
Manfred Schieber, Trompe l'oeil - Painting
9.9. - 14.10.2016
Vernissage | Thursday, 8 September 2016 at 7 pm
Ute Wöllmann, gallery owner, Berlin, will introduce the exhibition Exhibition duration | 9.9. - 14.10. 2016

In the "Augenschein" exhibition, the ROOT Gallery presents two extraordinary artists, Gerard Mas and Manfred Schieber, who are open to scrutiny. Don't rely too much on your visual habits, you're sure to fall into all the visual traps!

Gerard Mas is a sculptor and Manfred Schieber is a painter. Both are masters of their craft. Both are committed to a realism that impresses with its craftsmanship and accuracy. This craftsmanship unfolds in both of them on the basis of their many years of work as restorers. Manfred Schieber is a restorer of 20th century paintings and contemporary art. Gerard Mas trained as a restorer of stone sculptures before studying sculpture. Both have dedicated their art to the techniques of the old masters, to which they each add a good dose of the contemporary, spiced up with plenty of humour.
At first glance, we see Gerard Mas Florentine Renaissance portrait busts from the 15th century. What we admire most about these busts today is the extraordinary craftsmanship of the detailed stone sculptors of the time. However, the supposed temporal localisation in the Renaissance is disturbed by modern references, which expose the busts on display as invented portraits of a separate era at the interface of modernity and the Renaissance. One lady is betrayed by a sunburn on her décolleté that outlines a bikini top. The next is dressed in the same bikini top and a swimming cap. The other has a skull tattoo peeking out from under her historical dress. The fourth lady obviously doesn't know how to behave in public, now as then. And yet another lady betrays her unseemly behaviour with her heavily smudged lipstick.
Also Manfred Schieber plays a sophisticated game with appearance and reality. As a restorer, he has familiarised himself with old painting techniques and continues to refine and perfect them.
A loaf of bread, as if fresh from the bakery, over a white tablecloth on a cling film, next to it a bluish-transparent mineral water bottle made of the usual material PET, and a half-filled glass of water - this is what a typical Schieber still life looks like, here the "Prunkstillleben Wasser und Brot I" from 2013. The Prunkstillleben is at the end of the development of the baroque still life, usually with lush fruit, silver bowls, sliced melons, deceptively "real".
Manfred Schieber brings it into our time with the quite banal "splendour" of our everyday life, but painted as by the ancients - built up in layers of tempera, oil and modern acrylic paints. The Chinese tin can from the tea shop, the tin can from the discounter, the plastic bag from the supermarket - or just rubbish lying around, these are the objects that the 63-year-old collects in his still lifes.
He sometimes takes the play with appearance and reality, artificiality and reality to extremes with a great deal of humour: for example, when he paints plastic flowers in a floral still life - on which the odd fly has strayed. Real or fake?
What is real, what is false? How does perception work? How do you create illusion and how do you destroy it with illusionistic means? These are the questions that drive this painter with a great sense of mischievous humour when he apparently lets drops of water run over a painting, attaches strips of adhesive tape or cracks a supposed pane of glass.
His play with the disillusioned illusion goes so far as to "wrap" Vincent van Gogh's sunflowers in air-filled bubble wrap or a Vermeer behind corrugated cardboard, painted so deceptively real that visitors to the exhibition are more likely to wonder why we didn't unpack the paintings before hanging them up than to realise that they can hardly be a real Vermeer.
With their irony, both artists force us to reflect on our reality. With their art, both force us to take a closer look at our perception of reality and to scrutinise what we see.

Manfred Schieber 1952 - 2016
We mourn the loss of Manfred Schieberwho passed away on 12 May 2016. In addition to his work as a painter, he was also active as a painting restorer. Manfred Schieber has been a lecturer in painting technique at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin since 2007 and co-founder of the ROOT producers' gallery on Savignyplatz, of which he was a member from 2010 to 2014. He is represented as an artist by the ROOT gallery. For this exhibition, together with Gerard Mas to exhibit. We would like to thank the 3 Punts Galeria in Barcelona for making the fulfilment of his wish possible.
Gerard Mas
1976 born in Sant Feiu de Guixols (Girona); 1994-98 sculpture restoration training at the Escola Superior de Conservació i Restauració de Béns Culturale de Catalunya, Barcelona. 1989 - 2001 Study of Sculpture, Escuela de Artes Aplicadas y Oficios Artísticos "Llotja" de Barcelona. Gerard Mas is exclusively represented by 3 Punts Galeria, Barcelona.

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