Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Markus Stegmann, Xaver Bayer, Ute Stuffer.
Leipzig painter David Schnell (born 1971) has gained acclaim throughout Europe and the U.S. over the last decade, for his dizzying landscapes that tackle contemporary collisions of nature and civilization. Through a deft use of competing vanishing points and shimmering color, Schnell creates an impression of incessant, destabilizing speed. This monograph surveys his work to date.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Dieter Daniels, Cheryl D. Hartup, Bettina Ruhrberg.
Leipzig-based David Schnell, who studied at the Art Academy of Leipzig, creates paintings that unsettle our sense of perception with their odd use of perspective and irrational architectural elements. In “Hochbahn” (2001), a highway overpass stretches above a scenic marsh with trees in the distance. The overpass comes, seemingly out of the canvas, straight at us--only to break apart unexpectedly before reaching its vanishing point. Schnell, with his reliance on foreshortening and his attention to detail in the landscapes that form his backgrounds, blends traditional architectural drafting techniques with more realistic classical painting aesthetics. As this monograph reveals, his works hinge on the use of central perspective, which is prominent in Renaissance art and which causes the horizon to become the most important element in the painting, both in terms of composition and content.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Ziba De Weck, Tina Schultz.
The up-and-coming Leipzig painter David Schnell (b. 1971) employs elements of landscape in all of his edgy, large-scale canvases, but he is by no means a traditional landscape painter. A younger contemporary of Neo Rauch and Tim Eitel, Schnell uses oils, tempera and acrylics to render obsessive spaces that often feel as if they might engulf the viewer. Relying on very strong linear perspective and vanishing points to create his idiosyncratic pictorial order, where even the trees are perfectly straight vertical forms, he often seems to counteract that very order with a subliminal, hyperactive energy that buzzes through the paintings--perhaps suggesting a critical stance towards our treatment of nature in contemporary society.
David Schnell
David Schnell