Joschka Banzhaf
In Joschka Banzhaf's painting, the hidden is found as a form of expression, so that the view of an increasingly complex world is translated into a visual language. In doing so, he makes use of a wide variety of stylistic elements, ranging from cartoon culture to scientific findings and cave paintings.
Painting functions as a platform to better understand the world and to gain new visual experiences and insights.
An important element of his mode of expression is writing, which not only serves as a narrative aspect, but can also be recognised in the compositional structure of his works. The simplification of words, as typically used in cartoons, and the interplay of text as well as symbolised drawing is predestined for painting.
Banzhaf's pictures are constructed using the technique of collage and are interwoven into a dense composition.
Collage is not only to be understood in its original sense, but also in its fundamental approach. Different themes such as biology, art history, politics and geography can be combined in painting.
In this way, seemingly contradictory themes and pictorial elements come together like a puzzle.
Reduced figures often appear in Joschka Banzhaf's paintings,
as they can be seen in rock and cave paintings. Symbolic line drawings and depictions of animals that have been expresssed throughout human history for thousands of years.
The gestural guidance of the brush as a form of eruptive colour design is just as evident in Joschka Banzhaf's works as the design of the visible and an abstract subconscious level of expression.
The blending of supposed opposites known as high and low culture is also evident. Naive or even archaic art meets with naturalistic variants and opens up new possibilities that enrich the spectrum of painting.
Everything that serves the image can be processed in painting, without temporal hierarchies or conceptual regularities. Thus, even in the 21st century, painting is a catalyst for the interpretation of the present and in a certain way becomes a mirror of society with its abysses and achievements.