Sven Drühl’s artistic work lies in the field of conceptual painting, belonging to the tradition of serial and Appropriation Art. In a kind of remix or transformation, he re-interprets famous paintings from art history or contemporary art. As patterns for his unconventional paintings, he chooses ‘classics’ ranging from Monet and C.D. Friedrich to Hodler, even Havekost. Drühl’s pictures focus on experimental painterly reproduction and simultaneously play with the idea of imitation in an ironic way. The famous patterns are reproduced using contemporary techniques and thus quasi recreated. Sven Drühl uses silicon to draw the outlines; oil paints and glossy varnishes give the paintings their typical cool ambience.

In recent works, Drühl abandons the characteristic silicon paste. He combines paintings based on photographic patterns with hackneyed citations from art history, thus extending his consistently followed concept of serial appropriation by the inclusion of real photographs. In his neon works, Drühl goes one step further: the outlines of the borrowed pictorial motifs are realised in neon. These works concentrate on the silhouettes and exude a mysterious glow, meaning that reminiscences of Romanticism and its landscape idyll are again expressed in contemporary image reception.

To acknowledge the award of the “Falkenrot” Prize 2007 to Sven Drühl, Künstlerhaus Bethanien is showing a representative selection of the artist’s work to date.