Bart Domburg is a contemporary Dutch painter. These three factors combine in works that present a powerful new interpretation of what painting can offer. In his earlier portraits and in these new paintings he has revised the visual codes of the past in order to represent the complexity of the present. Das große Fenster (The big window) includes works made since his arrival in Berlin three years ago and reveals his understanding of the emotional and symbolic significance of the history of place. Among them are the garden of the house where the Wannsee Conference was held in 1942, and a painting of the view from Hitler’s mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps. This is ‘the big window’ of the title, with its references both to the earliest traditions of painting and the contemporary dominance of the screen (cinema, TV, computer). Three large canvases depict three stretches of water: the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Dead sea, each 2 meters by 2.5 meters. In all three paintings the horizon is fixed at the same height, nevertheless they place the viewer in entirely different frames of reference. Bart Domburg makes use of allegorical allusions that extend far back into the history of painting, but he does this as a contemporary artist.

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Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin