My latest solo show 2Q13 Speculative Realism. Opening at Lehr Zeitgenössische Kunst, Cologne. Friday 1st November, 7pm. 01.11.-14.12.13. It involves installation and painting. Looking forward to seeing you!

2Q13 

Speculative Realism

For several years, the British artist Christopher Winter has dealt with the human yearning for the supernatural, his obsession with the creation of illusions and the urge to manipulate reality.

In his new work, which he is showing at Lehr Zeitgenössische Kunst under the title 2Q13 Speculative Realism, Winter also deals with different aspects of our reality. The works have been influenced by the novel 1Q84 (phonetically in Japanese: 1984) by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. 1Q84 alludes to George Orwell‘s novel 1984. However, unlike Orwell, Murakami depicts the year 1984 as it could be and not as it will be. In 1Q84 Murakami creates a parallel world, a tear in the fabric of time, which has created an alternative present. His protagonists gradually discover that they are no longer living in Tokyo in 1984, but in the year 1Q84. 

Winter also confronts the viewer in his new work with a second reality. In the narrative intensity characterised by these visual worlds, the familiar mixes with the unknown, the probable with the puzzling, and the mundane with the absurd. Artefacts, which are part of recognizable reality, obtain a second identity on the canvas. For example, the painting Cubist Rabbit appears in the background of Speculative Realism (and the Cubist Rabbit). In addition, it actually exists as a separate physical work that flanks Winter’s painting as an installation. Through this he expands the visual space and explores the boundaries between reality and illusion. Thus Winter refers at the same time to the philosophical approach of the artistic style of Cubism, which aimed to show an alternative to the known reality. The subtitle of the exhibition Speculative Realism poses more questions than it answers. How can one begin with a reality that is purely in the speculative realm? Here reality is the imaginable on the verge of absurdity, of fiction; it is the twilight in which Winter locates his work.

A similar approach is used by Winter in his Postcards from a Parallel World. Postcards, whose purpose is the suggestion of a real moment, portray almost always an illusion. Winter‘s playful mirror imaging of the motif subtly indicates a parallel world. It also creates abstract effects that resemble the view through a kaleidoscope and confound the figurative representation.

Eva Struckmeier, Art Historian