Hubert Scheibl

The title of this oil painting seems as transparent, at first sight, as the actual material used, namely "oil on canvas". After all, oil paint is applied to the canvas in expressive brushstrokes to produce shades of grey that evoke clouds of smoke. The work of Hubert Scheibl (* 1952 Gmunden, AT) is intuitive and for the most part abstract. Like the pictures of Herbert Brandl, two of which belong to the EPO collection, Scheibl's works are characterised by expressiveness. Scheibl studied under Arnulf Rainer and in the 1980s belonged to the Neue Wilde or "wild youth" movement, which examined the emotional expression of the pictorial in expressively sensuous and spontaneous gestural pictures. Nicotin on silverscreen is one of Scheibl's later works, in which he avoids strong colours in favour of an almost meditative, monochrome pictorial space: subtle grey tones appear to overlay red-brown nuances. It could be smoke into which and through which the viewer peers - or it could just as easily be whatever associations the viewer makes when looking at the picture.