//Thomas de Leliwa | Culture.Room

**Daidalos (2012) / Acrylics on canvas / 200x150cm**

Thomas de Leliwa uses different painterly concepts and traditions in his artistic practice: He works with narratives, abstract, conceptual or concrete approaches, mostly in small series. This gives him the greatest possible artistic freedom to achieve in his paintings a form of expression adequate to the phenomenon or theme in question. The material consists not only of motifs or structures, but includes already found procedures of image creation and use.

//Stories zur Dialektik des Anthropozäns – Series (Selection)

Billy the Kid (2014) / Oil on canvas / 150x200cm
Mare Nostrum (2014) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 200x300cm
Folget der Botschaft (2017) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 200x150cm
Rabautz (2016) / Oil on canvas / 190x250cm
Nie mehr Schnee schippen (2015) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 150x240cm
Tanzpalast (2017) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 150x200cm
Fernbedienung (2016) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 190x250cm
Arosa (2012) / Oil on canvas / 120x150cm
Rettung (2012) / Oil on canvas / 150x200cm
Tiefe Wasser (2012) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 120x150cm

As such, the material is freely handled and put into new orders. It is about compression, exaggeration, distortion, destruction and about new connections through re-montage or cross-fading. It is about painting as an act of direct communication: it should challenge, overwhelm, and entertain the viewer.

**Redux (2018) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 100x90cm**

**2Q² Viertel – I, II, III, IV (2013) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80 x 80 cm**

Furthermore, one aspect of his painting concerns the current aesthetic changes of imagery in general. Visual perception has been fundamentally transformed and expanded in the last 20 years. Based on the predominantly visually formed digitization of communication, an extreme increase in colorfulness, gaudiness, and contrast has occupied our everyday environment and also changed the mechanisms and temporality of our mode of perception. Visual stimuli are ramped up to compete for attention. The time to respond to stimuli is getting shorter and shorter.

**Unentschieden (2012) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 200 x 150cm**

Thomas tries to examine these aesthetic phenomena and conditions of overstimulation artistically with the craft means of painting and to make them the starting point for a new pictorial design.

//Subversive Paintings – Series (Selection)

Arcadia revisited (2015) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 125x100cm
Vier Sonnen (2020) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80x60cm
Bubbles (2016) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 125x100cm
Archaeology of dissolution (2022) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 180x260cm
Whatsappanddown (2015) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80x100cm
Tisky (2021) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 135x115cm
Stand des Wissens (2017) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 260x190cm
Wirklich gute Malerei (2013) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 160x120cm
Birdy (2018) / Acrylics on canvas / 100x80cm
Inside HAL (2018) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 180x240cm

**Left: Shades Nr. 2 (2014) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 125x125cm // Right: Shades Nr. 1 (2014) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 125x125cm**

The pictorial phenomena of the present and their origins in terms of content often form the fundus. Starting from the medial, social and cognitive determination of human seeing, the artist tries to interpret the effects of this process with painterly means.

Love minus Zero (2013) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80x80cm
Syriah (2013) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80x80cm
Remmos (2013) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80x80cm
Wo ist die Maus (2013) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 80x80cm

The artistic process of painting means each time anew the further development of his personal expression, which finds its unfolding in a specific and original transformation. The indispensability as an individual in a world of existential uncertainty influences both content (theme) and expression (style) in the confrontation with realities.

//Abstractnonabstract – Series / Language of Bodies – Series (Selection)

Wolken ziehen vorüber (2009) / Oil, acrylics on cardboard / 40x50cm
Großer Wudor (2015) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 240x140cm
Redloins (2021) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 150x120cm
Gibson (2021) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 150x150cm
Der Abend des folgenden Tages (2015) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 125x100cm
Cowboy in the rye (2021) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 160x180cm
Daniel (2020) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 125x135cm
Renate (2014) / Oil, acrylics on canvas/ 125x100cm
CDF remixed (2016) / Oil on canvas / 125x100cm
Nude (2018) / Acrylics on hardboard / 60x80cm
Memo (2019) / Oil on canvas / 50x60cm
Presuma 0.6 (2020) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 100x100cm

**Wiedersehen alter Freunde (2016) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 100x80cm**

//Drip-Paintings – Kleine Freuden – Series (Selection)

Rewolf (2018) / Oil, acrylics on canvas/ 100x90cm
Wums (2018) / Acrylics on canvas/ 80x100cm
Kleine Freuden 01 (2021) / Acrylics on canvas/ 40x40cm
Philosoph (2018) / Oil, acrylics on hardboard / 100x70cm
Presuma 0.3 (2016) / Oil, acrylics on canvas / 140x100cm

Each finished image creates a new reality that challenges him to come closer to a reassurance with the next image, but which can never be fully achieved. In the spirit of Albert Camus, “We must think of Sisyphus as a happy man.”

//Beauty and Truth – Series (Selection)