Jost Münster Marked and Unmarked Spaces

Jost Münster's paintings and installations in wood, paint and paper experiment with colour and the painted surface to create a series of works that explore the reaches of representation. His work spans and connects painting and sculpture; one of a generation of artists who push, pull apart, extend, and test the boundaries of what a painting can be.Working from his urban surroundings, Münster uses shapes from fragments of facades, silhouettes and individual geometric elements. He strips...
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Jost Münster's paintings and installations in wood, paint and paper experiment with colour and the painted surface to create a series of works that explore the reaches of representation. His work spans and connects painting and sculpture; one of a generation of artists who push, pull apart, extend, and test the boundaries of what a painting can be.Working from his urban surroundings, Münster uses shapes from fragments of facades, silhouettes and individual geometric elements. He strips away pictorial detail, flattens and collages surfaces with abstract, mosaic-like colour swatches and backgrounds.Layering materials is a significant method for Münster, sometimes painting over the top of older works, renewing their surfaces and leaving small traces of what was there before. This accentuates a defining preoccupation - the relationship between foreground and background, and facilitates a conversation between the old and new. Subtraction and stripping away is another process through which Münster plays with the tension between something that appears weathered and depleted, or conversely entirely full of fresh content.