Hendrik Krawen

Hendrik Krawen (b. 1963, Lübeck) lives and works in Berlin.

His artistic focus is on painting, drawing and graphics. A consistent feature in his work is reduction. With his affinity for music and pop culture and the references to it in many of his works, as well as in the knowledge of his enthusiastic and inspiring activities as a music collector and DJ (he has also designed flyers, posters and record covers - including eight for Italic), one might even speak of Dub. In this musical genre, which originally emerged from Reggae, songs are purged and reduced to their essential elements; and single markers are repeated e.g. with echo effects. Likewise, Krawen interprets the surrounding world, reducing it to precise stark drawings, he works with a monochrome colour scheme and through the use of patterns makes visible the constructed nature of a supposed chaos.

Krawen‘s drawings remind one of Ingres, of the illustrative works of early Warhol, of the Franco-Belgian ligne claire school of comics and, of course, of architectural drawing. Fastidiously rendered, he often contrasts his motifs with coarse shadow-figures, who in painterly quality go beyond mere staffage. Krawen‘s tools are brushes and paint. The graphite pencil is used only privately or in the sketchbook.

Krawen plays with typography, between sgraffiti and graffiti, twisting and turning letters, working with stamps and stencils. Here handwork is crucial. Krawen does not paint watercolors onto computer prints. Keeping with music, his inspiration is more likely to be found in the DIY aesthetics of early Detroit Techno, Jamaican Reggae records, or African music. Krawen‘s painting is solid, graphical, often full-tone. Here, too, he works with utmost care – application of color, monochromy, contrast. What is portrayed becomes emblematic. Gestural expression is of less importance to him; rather an affinity to screen-printing, as an idea, the pattern, the serial.

Ich sing' Dir ein Lied

Hendrik Krawen - Ich sing' Dir ein Lied (Part 1)
9 September—4 November 2017
Opening: Saturday, 9 September

ICH SING‘ DIR EIN LIED – meaning „I‘ll sing you a song“ – is an exhibition in two parts.

For the first part (9 September—4 November), Hendrik Krawen combines six individual works in situ to create a great narrative. Five landscape formats, one square.The color palette is reduced to brown, yellow and green, the color application is solid. I‘ll sing you a song. From left to right are two shadows, an embrace, a kiss, folding pictures, a interplay with strong contrasts, what is there, what is not, what is the substance, what is the emptiness – all just a dream? This repeats itself in the stars – when I stamp them out, do I see them? Or not? „Fatal“ (oil on canvas, 2016) is the title of the largest work. An urban network of streets, a connexion in the literal sense: framed by two watercourses in the form of a male and a female silhouette, which seem caught in an intertwining movement; the street names are an alphabet of meeting, loving and parting. Next to the green square, then „Fin“, the end, the orange-brown writing, the dark brown background bulges up, the paint seems to be blistering off, creating space, for something behind it: I‘ll sing you a song. And it is far from over.

Hendrik Krawen, Ich sing' Dir ein Lied, Installation view, 2017, Italic Berlin

Hendrik Krawen, Fatal, 2016, Oil on canvas, 110,5 x 220 cm

Hendrik Krawen - Ich sing' Dir ein Lied (Part 2)
11 November—30 December 2017
Opening: Saturday, 11 November

The second part (11 November—30 December) belongs to the opposing tiled wall. The painting »Gulf of Oman« (oil on canvas, 2017) is part of his series of works featuring oil tankers, begun in 1991 (the first Gulf War). Hendrik Krawen translates the subject of marine painting, of real or possible veduta – decipherable in the composition of the ship models – into his own language: the extremely deep angle of perspective and the horizon, the wide-open sky, the precision in the monochrome representation. This can also be found in his cityscapes – where the real or possible location becomes visible by means of architectural elements and typographical signs, such as signposts or advertising billboards. I‘ll sing you a song. The great ships distance themselves from us. I see them disappearing on the horizon.

Text: Andreas Reihse

Hendrik Krawen, Ich sing' Dir ein Lied, Installation view, 2017, Italic Berlin

Der Angebrochene Tag

Hendrik Krawen - Der Angebrochene Tag
7–26 June 2020
Opening: Sunday, 7 June, 12–6 pm

DER ANBROCHENE TAG is Hendrik Kraven‘s second solo exhibition at ITALIC. The previous one, ICH SING‘ DIR EIN LIED, extended in 2017 from late summer to winter. Krawen had divided it into two sections: in the first he showed six individual works on one side of the room, in the following block the large-format oil painting „Gulf of Oman“ claimed the opposite, tiled wall for itself. Majestic. And lonely.

Now he is assembling 21 works that are dancing around the exhibition space. DER ANBROCHENE TAG has composed Krawen with such care that neither the care nor the composition is exhibited. A snap of the fingers! - you can still hear the clicking sound echoing in the room.

Hendrik Krawen sees himself as a painter. Even though many of his works have the appearance of graphics or drawings, they are still paintings. Krawen works with a steady hand, with brush and oil. Reduced compositions, insignificant motifs, pop music. Pictorial elements borrowed from printing technology, architecture and typography. Much in DER ANBROCHENE TAG is familiar. Urban motifs resembling silhouettes (Silhouette No. 5, 2004, Silhouette No. 11 .1, 2011), a single person in a thoughtful posture protected by strictly hatched parcels of willow (Zanz 5, 2011), the steaming soup bowl with kanji characters and the Chicago telephone number for a techno party (Musik, 1997), the angel crouching on the globe with horn and palm branch (halfway patched/ verse 5, 2011), the angel with horn and palm branch (halfway patched / verse 5, 2011), the angel with horn and palm branch (halfway patched / verse 5, 2011), and the steaming soup bowl with kanji characters and the Chicago telephone number for a techno party (Musik, 1997). II, 2020), the painting of green tiles placed far below (Stones (IV/2), 2018), which with its black and white diamond ornamentation seems to send a mysterious signal to the tiled wall opposite. In the middle of the latter is the Trompel‘œil Regina in Finsterwalde (2019), an expansive typeface over a cute lantern, which in turn looks over to the Edition Dezember (silkscreen, 2003), tumbling letters, spelling Antonelli, dialogue and a head birth of two people.

In DER ANBROCHENE TAG, Krawen also gives us other insights. The square in the centre of the left wall belongs to the painting „Marly and Richard“. A couple in a tidy scenario, a forbidden duel, an illustration from an 18th century chivalry novel. Pulled up, the grid torn open, flatly coloured in clear colours, her in a yellow tone, him in green, branches in brown - like a panel from a 1960s history comic: „I‘m doing Pop Art now,“ says Hendrik Krawen with a laugh, but the background is an exciting, cloudy painting - „and Readymades!“, he points to a piece of packaging material (o.T., 2013) and to an imageless picture carrier (Peter and Helga, 2020). But the two are not as imageless as they seem at first glance, because they are written on with writing and pasted and finally signed and framed by ties. Or framed and then signed, since the frame here not only distinguishes the work as such, but is itself part of it. Then photography: a pair (Sabine and Salva, 1982/2020) of postpunk, greyscales, 1980s, when people still knew how to stage themselves, copied in the NME, by British stylists, who in turn copied it in the continental film of the 1920s and then again in the 1960s, as in the second photographic work (Franz and Ewa, 2020), again a pair, and another staging, found, enlarged, edited, clear contours, perhaps actually a film still. It‘s not about making new friends. Krawen uses techniques and strategies that he has followed and tested for a long time in painting. And of course, in every single work you see his eye, his hand, his intervention. That he took a piece of cardboard found on the street is no coincidence. He may not have been looking for it, but part of his decades of artistic practice is also looking more closely. And suddenly something looks back. And so this box found him. And he was not the only one. And perhaps they were all material at first, perhaps they were rehearsals, sections, exercises for a painting, until Hendrik Krawen looked again and knew:You are, and you are also - and selected - you are the work, and packed it and took it with him to exhibit it, to let it enter into dialogue with the other paintings, to let it immerse the room in a buzzing swing. And with a snap of his fingers! he set about the hanging.

Text: Andreas Reihse