richness of form

»...let us see, if we can find way out, but I myself believe there is none« – text fragment to the title »odyssee, 10.song II«. the scene reveals danger, expresses doubt about an escape, but what is to be seen in the picture? a broadly painted frame and within a rectangle, formed of diogonal stripes of colour in red and yellow tones, all of which is spread over with traces of dilapidation,.., with strokes and rifts, with scrawling and strange lettering. the painted picture draws the present out of the historical past, makes the hopelessness of the cited situation visible; at the same time, it confines the threat of the text within fixed limits; these elements and this tense conflict are to be found in all 23 works on canvas. the close connection between words and picture is easily comprehended, when we learn, that this artist now living in wiesbaden studied german philology, philosophy and economics in mainz, and then painting at the städel in frankfurt under the scandal provoking hermann nitsch. urban chooses difficult literature, for example a kafka passage about the silence of the sirens, also a project – ways of dying based on ingeborg bachmann, a lyrical sketch by durs grünbein about the first look and the last, which cross each other in a curve, »astonished at the short distance«. there is always the sense of insecurity, of confusion, of fearful wonder, also with the death threat in »exodus«; the resulting pictures however are not merely an interpretation, presented in another medium, but always a new creation with background of distress and stability, chaos and order…the superimposed script adds both the meaning and the form, the surfaces live from the structure of the applied materials and the writing scratched into them, whether as fine lines or as labyrinthine formula, here the puzzle and the mystery find its way in. this is counteracted by the monochromy of the colour itself which expresses unity and clarity. 

In the pictures in pairs, this impression is even intensified, the smaller ones, especially, showing a richness of form, as in the augustinus-pictures with their in varied concentration, crustated surfaces and script bands, or in the brillant red beauty of the diptychon »mora«.

dr. bruno russ, art critic