David Ostrowski: "the search for meaning in nonsense".

David Ostrowski is one of the youngest and most discussed personalities of the international

contemporary art scene, as well as a revelation of the art market.

In the past two years his works have captured international attention, being exposed in Berlin, Paris, Zurich, New York, Los Angeles, Turin and Copenhagen.

Ostrowski studied painting under Albert Oehlen, one of the most influential and controversial contemporary artists, at Kunstakademie, in Düsseldorf, where he graduated in 2009. Since 2006 he has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in galleries such as Peres Project and Simon Lee.

His research can be considered a process in which errors and coincidences become opportunities to create new things and bring to a sense of unexpected beauty and visual poetry. This reductivist approach to abstract painting and his longing for the unknown make him a protagonist of the innovation in contemporary abstractism.

"It’s all about constantly manipulating yourself; I want to fall for something all the time, to lose control in order to create a kind of tension. I’m a master of suppression and actually forget most of the time how I constructed, primed, and painted the works I have done before."

David Ostrowski in his studio.

Great part of his success is due to series ”F". Fehlermalerei series (which in german means wrong paintings), is intended as failure of his past academic experience and desire of breaking with traditional pictorial language.

The genesis of these works starts from the fire that burned his studio and all his paintings in Cologne (2011): the only survived canvas was dirty of sooty and had lost his shape. Since that moment, Ostrowski abandoned any link with figurative art and embraced the idea of an extremely spontaneous and as unmotivated as possible art.

"Ideas are completely overrated! I try to get to Ground Zero – to start at the beginning. Knowledge can be annoying and has to be suppressed sometimes. Luckily, I find myself right now in state of blissful stupidity; even though I recently talked myself into thinking I was actually eager to learn something – which has obviously proven to be wrong."

David Ostrowski, 'I'm OK.' Moments later, he was shot' Berlin, Karl-Marx-Allee 82, Mar 1 — Apr 13, 2013. Credits Peres Project.

Ostrowski imagines to paint with "the right hand as it was the left" and constantly experiments the effects of speed and imperfections. He uses large formats and works with the most different techniques and materials: from oil and lacquer to spray paints or anything he can find in his studio, such as paper, newspaper, dirt and dust. The result consists of extremely extemporaneous and rough creations, presenting large areas of white.

"I work only with the simplest and most inexpensive materials, since these aren’t already bogged down with information. I stopped painting in oil, since it offered me too many possibilities. Spray paint, on the other hand, forces you to restrict yourself; you have to work quickly with lacquer—it’s almost impossible to make corrections and there’s only a Plan A, never a Plan B. Painting over is not an option, since it’s not really possible with lacquer. The first shot counts. Too many acts are overestimated."

David Ostrowski, F (dann lieber nein), 2013, painting - oil, lacquer, paper on canvas, wood, 221x171 cm. Credits Peres Project.

Ostrowski means to constantly analyze the very nature of painting, intended as an overwhelming creativity that does not need any study or any preliminary preparation. His works want to induce his public to face wide exploratory spaces in a permanent reflection of the unknown.

"Painting enables me to produce the greatest possible emotions with the fewest possible means; since I’m a romantic painter, there’s a lot of drama going on."