Karl Stephan (°1958, Port Lyauty (Kenitra), Morocco) makes paintings and drawings. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, Stephan makes works that can be seen as self-portraits. Sometimes they appear idiosyncratic and quirky, at other times, they seem typical by-products of American superabundance and marketing.
His paintings are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in painting. With Plato’s allegory of the cave in mind, he makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. The work tries to express this with the help of physics and technology, but not by telling a story or creating a metaphor.
His collected, altered and own works are being confronted as aesthetically resilient, thematically interrelated material for memory and projection. The possible seems true and the truth exists, but it has many faces, as Hanna Arendt cites from Franz Kafka. By parodying mass media by exaggerating certain formal aspects inherent to our contemporary society, he absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation.
His works are saturated with obviousness, mental inertia, clichés and bad jokes. They question the coerciveness that is derived from the more profound meaning and the superficial aesthetic appearance of an image. Karl Stephan currently lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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