Albrecht Gehse--Turmoil: 50 Pictures of the World--A Cycle

Albrecht Gehse has an unmistakable style rooted in illusionistic representationalism. Drawing widely on past and present real-world events, his paintings depict a broad range of subjects, from bustling crowds to lone political figures like former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, from built spaces like theaters and apartment buildings to scenes of seething natural disaster. Yet these rapidly sketched scenes, stripped of traditional iconography, reveal a rich world of nightmares and dreamscapes bubbling beneath if one only cares to look. Gehse’s painterly renderings of the world are by turns frightening and funny, with his role as an interpreter underscored by the fact that he paints himself into many of his scenes.

With Albrecht Gehse—Turmoil, Christoph Stölzl has brought together the fifty paintings that comprise Gehse’s most recent series, Turmoil. Among the more than one hundred illustrations are many full-page reproductions, as well as detail shots that show points of special interest in the painting. Stölzl’s commentary sheds light on both the paintings and their subjects. Masterfully composed with explosive touches of color, Turmoil opens a strange, new window onto the world that will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary art.