Thomas Arnolds
RUN (Fraktale)

11 JAN until 22 FEB 2025

Opening on January 11, RUN (Fraktale), Thomas Arnolds’ upcoming solo show at Klemm’s, will present a new series of large-scale works that pursue the artist’s fundamental interest in constantly re-exploring the possibilities and conditions of painting. Both a continuation and a departure from previous works, this series is structured by a clash between abstraction and the presence of figurative bodily elements, hinting at a sense of dissection within the lines of juxtaposition often evoked in Arnolds’ work.

In this new series, the artist directs the analysis at a foundational level of painting as he presents a series of oil paintings structured by the tension between order and decompression – spiritual and bodily. Framed around the concurrence of colorful, unstructured nuclei of gestural abstract painting and single-colored figurative bodily elements such as hands or feet placed over a white background, the large-scale paintings juxtapose free movement to dissection, at the same time highlighting the rift between painterly and graphic. Overall, Arnolds points at the supremacy of painting over the painted subject, suggesting a sense of selfcontained gesture.

Working mostly in series, or ‘blocks,’ as the artist calls them, Arnolds has been expanding on a practice that negotiates central issues of painting in a coherent balance of, at first glance, contradicting designs, such as abstraction and figuration, minimalism and gesture, space and image, surface and matter, or hardedge and free duct-drawing. Aiming directly at these juxtapositions, Arnolds has created a set of instruments that are as precise as they are variably usable, a ‘free set of rules’ between intellect and ‘gut feeling,’ reflection and anarchy, with which he pushes his oeuvre forward as a radical proposal on painting.

The essence of Arnolds’ paintings lies in their capacity to embody a concise articulation of these conflicting elements. This sinuous strategy is often more of a rhizome than an itinerary. Working mostly in series, Arnolds deliberately does not develop his work linearly in clearly defined groups of works. New series generally bring forward a mix of references and clashes with previous ones. Based on an initial conceptual outlining, initial elements are mixed up in the process and confronted with new technology or changed painterly access. In doing so, Thomas Arnolds opens up new painterly terrain and adds a narrative, personal, and content-related dimension to a rather systematic framework, effectively merging them into the canvas.

Thomas Arnolds’ RUN (Fraktale), will use Klemm’s two different floors and will be on view until February 22, 2025.