Opening event:
Tuesday, 31 January, 7.00 p.m.
 
Exhibition dates:
1 February 2006 - 20 March 2006
 
GALLERY hours:
Monday to Friday from 9.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m.
 
Address:
Hellabrunner Strasse 1
81543 Munich, Germany
 
 
Cantoni's drawings are inspired by fast moving pictures from the New York Times. Most of them are politically charged photos that are enlarged, transferred onto tracing paper, and burned into the paper using sunlight refracted through a magnifying glass. By transforming the published pictures into his "burn drawings", Cantoni condenses them thematically and removes their transient character. Despite their fragility, the depicted events become contemporary witnesses of our world - a world we essentially perceive through a plethora of images.

Cantoni also captures a fleeting perception of everyday life in his soft, paste-like paintings. His painted portraits with faces reflecting their own fate are especially remarkable. The portraits appear very direct and look us straight in the eye as if they have caught us staring at them. As an outsider who is only remotely confronted with the fate of others, the viewer feels accused of voyeurism that somehow seems inescapable.
 
The colours of the pictures are light and paste-like, mostly in shades of white or grey applied in multiple reflective glazes and layers. At first glance, the pictures appear indistinct and unreal as if they were being viewed through a veil and need to be looked at more closely. Similar to the way everyday events fade from memory, the images vanish as fast as they appeared, yet remain captured in the pictures.
 
In conjunction with the OSRAM anniversary year, the exhibition is being presented in co-operation with Dina4 Projekte Munich.
 
 
Biography
 
David Contoni was born in 1965 in Milan, lives and works in New York. Cantoni studied at the HDK Berlin (1988), at the Slade School, U.C.L., London (1985-89) and at the Royal College of Art, London (1991-93).