Alan Ebnother / artwork  1069

Alan Ebnother works “in green”: “The green is an infinitely calm color.” Yet, in reality, dramas play out in his paintings, which is why the artist demands to look at them. “Damn it, just look! What the hell are you guys looking at? Do you think this is fun or romantic!” Those who partout only see green, make it all too easy for themselves. Ebnother, a trained ballet dancer in the Stuttgart, then Hamburg Neumann troupe, used a palette knife and brush after 1975 to transfer the pas de deux to the canvas: Pastos he piles up the pigments, reaches into the monochrome green surface and dances over the wet paint with a step of the palette knife or brush, the smooth surface is vibrated by barely perceptible color distortions. The artist thereby gives the paint form, shape, and only thereby, for he allows neither frame nor internal drawing to find a firm hold. Even the picture support seems to disappear under the impasto application of paint.