The Perimeter is pleased to present Test by German artist David Ostrowski. This solo exhibition predominately features new works that explore the formal process of painting and it’s semantics.
Ostrowski challenges art historical traditions of abstraction, by implementing reductive techniques through language, surface and repetition which allow his materials and instruments to lead the gestural process of mark making. Test is a statement on Ostrowski’s painterly practice, which brings together multiple bodies of the artist’s work in conversation for the first time, including his signature F-Series.
Using monochromatic colour palettes, Test transforms The Perimeter through various methods of display. The exhibition reflects a spatial and process-oriented approach to abstraction. It extends the painterly space into an architectural one - and vice versa - transforming The Perimeter into Ostrowski’s pictorial landscape. Often incorporating spray paint and found objects, such as paper and packing tape, the artist plays with the associative and tactile relationships of everyday materials. Working with contingency and reduction as a medium within his practice, Ostrowski allows material, surface and gesture to determine form.
Compositions unfold through a methodical use of coincidence and error. Ostrowski both engages with, and refuses, classification systems of language, where the slippages between form and content function as a material in the work. Titles, often two-fold, reference a multiplicity of readings found across Ostrowski’s paintings, where a subject is not only defined by its expressive meaning, but can be visualised through the medium of painting itself. Test reflects the spontaneity, directness, and openness of his process, while demonstrating that these qualities are not in contradiction to precision, but rather substantial components of it.
This exhibition is accompanied by a limited-edition catalogue that engages conceptually with the theme of test. In various places, repetitions or test strips appear - comparable to a proof, a test print, or a test screening. The recurring colour palette of this catalogue - beige, black, and yellow - echoes the tones found in the vinyl flooring of the exhibition. A central part of the catalogue comprises triadic constellations of works from the show. These explore considerations of potentially infinite threefold variations and juxtapositions. While one would usually commit to a fixed form in a catalogue or exhibition, here this notion is deliberately stretched and tested.
The publication is produced by The Perimeter, designed by Christopher Tröster & Max Schropp of CTMS in collaboration with the artist, including a written text by Hans-Christian Dany.
David Ostrowski (*1981 in Cologne) lives and works in Cologne. From 2004–2009 he studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under Albert Oehlen. Ostrowski is a professor for painting at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe. Selected solo exhibitions include Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe (2025), Sprüth Magers, New York (2024), Fig., Tokyo and Ramiken, New York (both 2023), Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2021), Lady Helen, London (2020 with Angharad Williams) Avant-Garde Institute, Warsaw (2020 with Tobias Spichtig), Jir Sandel, Copenhagen and Leeahn Gallery, Seoul (both 2020), Sundogs, Paris and Piece Unique, Cologne (both 2019), Sprüth Magers, London and Wschód, Warsaw (both 2018); Halle 9 Kirowwerk, Leipzig and Blueproject Foundation, Barcelona (both 2017), Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren (2016 with Michail Pirgelis), Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen and Kunstraum Innsbruck (both 2015), Rubell Family Collection, Miami andFondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (both 2014). Selected groupexhibitions include Standard Oslo and Weiss Falk at XYZcollective, Tokyo (both 2023), Akademie der Künste, Berlin and Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne (both 2021), Triest, New York, Melange, Cologne and Pio Pico, Los Angeles (all 2020), Galerie Bernhard, Zurich, DuMont Kunsthalle, Cologne, and Braunsfelder, Cologne (both 2019), Aishti Foundation, Beirut (2018), Museum of Modern Art, Gunma (2017), Fondazione Carriero, Milan (2016), M Woods Museum, Beijing (2015), Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (both 2014). His work are held in public collections internationally, including the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Aishti Collection, Beirut; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Louis Vuitton Collection, Paris, among others.
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For press enquiries or images, please contact Fabian Strobel Lall: fabian@strobellall.com
