De Brock presents David Ostrowski’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Ostrowski, who studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, dedicated himself to painterly reduction after a devastating fire in his studio in which almost all of his paintings were destroyed. His artistic work, which follows neither a cultural canon nor a historical model, explores reduction through addition.
In the exhibition, Ostrowski presents the artwork “Portraits”, a series of eight pieces created between 2007 and 2023. This group of works is characterized by the use of monochrome panels in restrained, muted tones that explore the emotional and psychological effects of color. The exhibition also features more recent paintings from the “F series”, in which Ostrowski formally explores the letter “F” and implies themes such as mistakes and failures (Failure Painting). A novelty in Ostrowski’s work is the use of diptychs, which are framed with skirting boards and point to his architectural understanding of exhibition space and painterly space.
