Through Feb 23, 2011.
Traveling through space and time, the bodies portrayed by Altmann tend to follow metamorphic paths where they lose their distinctive features but don’t miss their expressive power. And this occurs also when the changing involves the physical elimination of limbs and relays only on an informal style lighten up by signs, traces, and contrasting nuances… This occurs also because at any stage Altmann moves on contaminating, erasing, overlapping emotional drives so much that in some paintings the instinctual, automatic gesture seems to prevail on the order of the mind. At times the way he proceeds on can recall the Surrealists who sometimes tended to be led by their own hands both on canvas or paper and were surprised by the wonder of the final result. Here this state of wonder produces other bodies, other torsions to be stretched within a flight span, a never-ending aerial prosecution with no landing points.
Altmann draws his inspiration from Classical or Renaissance modules and then collocates his stories in contemporaneity. All this is the result of frantic signs that don’t linger on mere descriptions but rather have an urge to express something. Therefore the appeal of the aesthetic, refined painting style is replaced by the appeal of the strong, meaningful gesture. Every time Altmann works as if he were facing a sketch, a preliminary drawing to be developed at a second stage. But the point is that to him there is never a second stage since the present time always leads his hand and stops the reasons that led to paint a picture.
The “prototype” to come will already be another story, a story possibly similar to the former as to intensity and emotional drive, but any formal rethinking will categorically be excluded. He moves on just like a river and carries away memories of his past experiences just to renew them, not to repeat them.
Nina Torres Fine Art
2033 NW 1st Place
Miami, Fl 33127
305.395.3599
www.ninatorresfineart.com
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