Christian Hellmich

Arrangement

June 1 - July 14, 2006
540 West 26th Street

Press Release

Lehmann Maupin Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in New York of Christian Hellmich. The exhibition title, "Arrangement," is a term borrowed from music and suggests an adaptation or combination.

Hellmich creates space on canvas by placing several objects and structures together, without regard for cohesion. Hellmich's works are simply exteriors or interiors of places that are anonymous and void of human presence. These places are not known or imagined; they are instead arrangements of his architectural perceptions.

The only narrative that exists in Hellmich's pictures is the story of painting itself. At times he may offer the viewer a door or entryway to his paintings, withholding a glimpse of what lies beyond. For all of his rigorous engagement with the principles of texture, form and geometry, Hellmich's paintings are fundamentally an exercise in taxonomy and architectonics. As Mark Gisbourne writes in the exhibition catalogue for Arrangement, "That the paintings are figurative is not, in fact, the most relevant of issues. That they are deliberately configurative seems to be more to the point."

"Arrangement" is accompanied by a 32-page exhibition catalogue of the same title.

Christian Hellmich was born in 1977 in Düsseldorf, Germany and studied Communication Design with an emphasis on free diagramming/painting at the University of Essen. Hellmich's work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and was featured in Lehmann Maupin's 2005 Summer Show, Fresh Paint. He lives and works in Köln, Germany.