Sebastian Lettner
Sebastian Lettner
Sebastian Lettner
Sebastian Lettner
Sebastian Lettner
Sebastian Lettner

Sebastian Lettner

Plein Soleil

10.06.21 – 08.08.21

Sebatian Lettner (Straubing, Germany, 1982) is exhibiting a selection of his work as a result of his artistic residency in May 2021 in one of the studios set up for this purpose at the CCA Andratx. He has titled it "Plein Soleil" after the 1960 film by René Clément, starring Alain Delon, which is based on the book "The Talent of Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith. As is well known, it tells the story of the impersonation of a rich heir, Greenleaf, by his friend Tom Ripley, who, after suffering various humiliations, murders him in a rowing boat on the waters of Ischia (in the film the location is called Mongibello). The plunging sun that runs through the scenes, a naked sun that seems to signify the impunity of the crime, the brazenness with which even the subsequent impersonation can be carried out in broad daylight, without the ambiguity of semi-shadow, throws the world into the arms of the colour yellow, which dominates and gives body to the whole of Sebastian Lettner's work. A mosaic made up of separate particles of cardboard painted yellow, with lines that structure a complex internal composition, and which the artist relates to the bursting of the swifts in spring, heads, together with an enormous canvas in the shape of a triangular sail containing other triangular areas, the branch of this visual discourse.

 

With an approach at the other extreme, Lettner also shows a gestural, neo-expressionist work, the result of a hard struggle against the blank, silent canvas. This section is dominated by an enormous piece entitled "Nomad", in which firm and very combative strokes, in resounding black, draw a chaotic and turbulent branch, among whose random designs a solitary and continuous stroke, in a sinuous shade of green, moves, dominates this section. Related to the tradition of abstract expressionism (its kinship with Pollock is evident, although there is no dripping here); Antonio Saura can also be mentioned at the Spanish level, obviously, although here we are not dealing with portraits of people, the work integrates a certain vegetal echo - Nature, at the mercy of the designs of entropy, which walks away from order - with an added autobiographical sense, thus confirming the flow of the stay in the Andratx residence at the foot of the mountains of the Mallorcan Sierra de Tramuntana. A few more papers, two with a yellow background and gestural strokes on top, and three others in which the colour green represents the Nature we have just mentioned, bear witness to the warp and woof of this work, which proposes a unity of action and gaze, despite the peripheral appearances.

In addition to this, Lettner presents a few small pieces, little jewels that present his identity card, pieces that bring us closer to his previous work, his style of painting in search of an autonomous language and a composition with a pure internal structure, alien to the narration of reality.

 

The interplay between the balance of forms and the spontaneity of free gesture is what distinguishes this exhibition, which unfolds before our eyes in full sunlight, with the impunity of the perfect crime.

 

 

Carlos Jover.