Jonas Weichsel

Though he works in two dimensions, producing pristine, abstract prints and paintings, Jonas Weichsel thinks of his compositions as sculptures or music. He sees the plane of the canvas or paper as a space that can be modeled by color and form. Triangles, rectangles, straight or gently curving lines, and strips and blocks of color compose his visual vocabulary. In endless, inventive variations, he arranges these elements into pictures that appear simultaneously flat and full of depth, and deceptively simple. By employing only shades of blue and a handful of carefully placed, overlapping rectangular and triangular shapes in Blau (2012), for example, Weichsel creates an almost Op Art-like sense of movement. Areas that seem to recede alternate with those that appear flattened, while geometric shapes dissolve, then re-form, as the eye roams across the picture’s ever-changing, beguiling surface.