Wykydal Stefan Wykydal Stefan

WYKYDAL STEFAN - MALEREI 2003-2006

Wykydal is a master of maintaining a fine balance between the free painting process and strict orientation on the selected subject, like a camera lens. The subtlety of the coloring and the color material harmonize with the cool and concrete realization of everyday occurrences such as a bus stop, art in public space, a scene from a soccer match or an artistic design of a school building.
Mag. Florian Steininger, curator of the BA-CA Art Forum, Vienna

The painter Stefan Wykydal, born in Vienna in 1976, shows medium to small-format gouaches in the ART LOUNGE in the STRABAG HAUS, the witty and pastose, painterly interpretations of motifs of his surroundings such as art in buildings, community buildings, bus stops, schools, still lifes, etc. represent. Plastic shapes, freely interpreted in fresh colors, point to the reinterpretations of the artist working on the further development of painterly tendencies, who is one of the new discoveries on the art market.

Stefan Wykydal's painting is clearly characterized by a sensual painterly texture. Immediately, with a supple ductus, he places the acrylic paint on the picture carrier, which alternates between self-referentiality and motif formation. The objective relation of his painting practice is important to him. His choice of subject is closely related to his immediate everyday surroundings. The artist rummages through the streets and squares of the city for curious occurrences, extraordinary 'markings' of the cityscape. In the past few years, an extensive block of works on the subject of art in public spaces has been created. These are orphaned, hardly noticed any more
Examples, especially figurative sculptures in the context of social housing. The original idea of ​​improving the attitude towards life through art seems to have failed. Like fossils from bygone days, torsos and files stand between the playground, garbage cans and garage entrances. Elephant cemeteries for noble bronze statues and symbolically charged statues, seemingly created to last, and yet so antiquated. Nevertheless, they are an essential and very predestined aspect in Viennese cultural history of the 1950s.
Wykydal has a sense for such grotesque subjects, he almost distills them from the everyday context.
Mag. Florian Steininger, curator of the BA-CA Art Forum, Vienna

Stefan Wykydal belongs to a young generation of artists who understand the world through mediation. For him, too, the ready-made images of everyday advertising and television play a major role. At the same time, however, his works are an objection to it. Because he uses painting and its possibilities to change a picture individually. Wykydal's painterly interventions in an inherently unpretentious, prefabricated world of images are just as irritating as they are convincing in the sense of an autonomous painting.

Dr Ingried Brugger, Director of the BA-CA Art Forum, Vienna
The highly pigmented acrylic paint sits delicately on the paper and gives the motif elegance and beauty. Wykydal is a master at maintaining a fine balance between the free painting process and the strict orientation on the selected subject, like a camera lens. The subtlety of the coloring and the color material harmonize with the cool and concrete realization of everyday occurrences such as a bus stop, art in public space, a scene from a soccer match or an artistic design of a school building.
Mag. Florian Steininger, curator of the BA-CA Kunstforum Wien

From the photographically produced smooth template of the image, a painting is created that is traced back to its sensual materiality. The delicate application of paint and the openness of the brushstroke break into the surface of the picture and only gradually allow the motif to reappear from the abstract texture. A kind of painterly puzzle emerges in which the visible becomes invisible and the obvious sinks into the puzzling. The superimposed brushstrokes set the successive and accentuated image structure against the simultaneous and even photography. The forcing of painterly autonomy culminates in places where the consistency of the pictorial bodies is broken up and pours into amorphous structures. These emphasize the pseudo-character of the illusory presence of the picture, since they draw attention from the narrative quality of the picture to its actual painterly structure. In analogy to the motion blur in photography, the color streaks that become independent convey the impression of fleetingness or blurriness. If the phenomena of disintegration take hold of the human face, this amounts to an obliteration of individuality ...
The photographic motif as a medially conveyed surface structure receives a new dimension through the painterly transfer process, becomes part of the understanding of this world.
Heike Eipeldauer, curator of the BA-CA Kunstforum Wien

WYKYDAL STEFAN

Born 1976 in Vienna
1994-98 studied painting at the University of Applied Arts Prof. Christian Ludwig Attersee
Lives and works in Vienna

Solo exhibitions

2005  
Bunte Schule Plastilin, Galerie Frey, Wien

Gruppenausstellungen

1995  
Artwork – Network, Galerie Hilger

1996  
Aphrodite, Zweckform und Eissalon, Heiligenkreuzerhof Wien

1997  
Wienmasken, Schömer-Haus Karl-Heinz Essl, Klosterneuburg

1998  
junge Götter, ORF-Funkhaus, Wien

2004  
Eröffnungsausstellung der Galerie Frey, Wien
Messebeteiligung an der KunstWien 2004 im MAK


Awards / Scholarships

1997/98 Erasmusstipendium, London Guildhall University
1998 Förderpreis des Landes Niederösterreich