Painting is: stroking with a brush

painting

The works of Dr. Bernhard Meyer are characterized by an exciting variety of graphic and painterly means. Rarely is such creative expression visible in the works of a single artist. Dr. Meyer is difficult to classify. While a few years ago an informal repertoire of signs still prevailed in his work, and he then worked towards a layering of different pictorial levels in his expressive will to express himself, his works are now characterized at first glance by an unusual reduction.

Mystical symbols mix with historical ciphers, but the human body emerges more and more clearly as a carrier of expression, as the most suitable means of transport for sensitively grasped states of mind in the sense of Egon Schiele or Edvard Munch. In this way, his works, detached from all current, changeable art movements, have reached a level that can truly be summed up with the term “timeless”.

If in Dr. Meyer’s works, where materials such as paint or grease meet earthy ink and brittle charcoal or pigments, this is not to be seen as an examination of formal painterly problems in the sense of a “bonne peinture”, but rather a necessary technical basis has been found to enable his visionary content to bring the idea into the appropriate form.

Even in deep conversations about his intended image statements, Dr. Bernhard Meyer very reserved and ambiguous. It is not just the desire to counteract the ever-changing environment with an equally diverse correspondence, but the artist’s inherent need to grasp his own state of mind and bring about a correspondence in the viewer.

This foray into the world of thoughts may irritate many visitors who cannot stand the reflection of their souls, but it is an aesthetic pleasure for the art-experienced viewer.

Dr. Fredebeul (Recklinghausen)

Catalog 2014 (in German)

some works