Previously showing at Dominik Mersch Gallery

Elger Esser, born 1967 in Stuttgart, Germany and raised in Rome, is a graduate of the ‚Becher class‘ of the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie. However one can not detect the formal strictness of Bernd Becher in Essers landscape and architectural photography. They seem to be more related to the earliest photography in their romantic static's.

Theses in faded yellow dipped landscapes, mostly taken in France and Italy, are in strange kind of transition; all the details are correct, nothing has been retouched, but still everything seems to be unreal and remote. Just as after a dream, there remain no concrete landscapes but vague impressions and memories of travelling through peaceful scenes, especially river landscapes and coastal regions. Essers merging picture zones of water, sand, snow and clouds create their un-insistent suction by extruding mainly one thing: calmness.

Philip Wolfhagen is, quintessentially, a painter of the Australian landscape, one whose work has been exclusively absorbed into his private obsession with Tasmania, the terrain of his personal origins. His work is physical, dense in its application, sombre in mood and tonality, the result of a deeply experienced, enduring engagement with an ancient, yet eternally living subject.

While Philip Wolfhagen’s work only came to the attention of Australian critics and collectors in the early 1990s, he is already regarded as one of Australia’s most outstanding landscape painters. Writing in the catalogue for his 2004 solo exhibtion, art critic Peter Timms said: 'It is, I think, the real daring of Philip Wolfhagen’s atmospheric essays on the agricultural northern Midlands area, where he lives, that they complicate our emotional and intellectual responses to pastoralism, cutting through the rhetoric of both environmentalists and farmers, while cheerfully snubbing the snow-capped-mountain clichés of the tourist industry … These are paintings not only about the love of nature but the nature of love.'

Due to Clemens Krauss’ medical-biological background, he holds degrees in both Medicine and Fine Art, his investigations are often affected by natural science.

His central concern is the human body. He operates between performance, painting, photography and site specific installation, each approach sharing the same conceptual framework. Krauss is interested in the body as a scene of identity, individuality and society and the question of the relation between the outer appearance and inner life of the body.

Blasco combines architecture, photography and installation to explore themes of vision and perception in relation to physical experience. Using digital photography and common building materials to assemble three-dimensional constructions that reconstruct interior spaces and outdoor environments culled from the artist’s personal New York cityscape. His work often references the realm of private or domestic space. Blasco normally begins by selecting one angle in a room or outdoors and then constructs a new space from the perspective of that vantage point. Though the distortions and emphases that Blasco orchestrates risk comparison with the actual streetscapes or rooms he’s re-creating, the resulting effect is a fragmentation of a single line of sight that is reminiscent of Cubist collages. Blasco’s three dimensional sculptures result in an elliptical succession of multiple angles, producing a space that is at once recognizable and entirely new.

Isidro Blasco is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Chicago Institute of Contemporary Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art and many International Museums. 

ominik Mersch from DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY in collaboration with PENELOPE SEIDLER will curate a non-profit exhibition at the gallery showcasing her collection of works by artist JOSEPH ALBERS.  As well, other works will be loaned. Penelope Seidler has a very interesting and significant collection of Albers works, and her late husband, the architect Harry Seidler was a former student of Albers.

JOSEPH ALBERS (March 19, 1888 – March 25, 1976) was a German born, American artist, influential teacher, writer, painter, color theorist and pioneer of twentieth-century modernism. Whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century. 

Born in New Zealand and now living in Australia, Locust Jones works have been primarily influenced by his travels and close attention and concern to current world political issues.

Through his works on paper, Jones challenges and delves into issues of contemporary politics. His style of commentary can be said to tackle the big picture head on, addressing issues of epic proportions, interspersing imagery from the media, newspapers, television and the internet, as well as personal experiences of current political situations in the world. Whether it be climate change, war in Iraq, ghosts of tortured forests or the greed of the global Financial industry.

With an animated and expressive energy he compulsively draws in ink, arranging on large-scale panoramic sheets of paper and in universal proportions his papiermâché globes, text-based imagery, expressive, scrawled drawings of haunted and tortured faces and gestures morph with tall foreboding buildings and the rubble and confusion of war torn cities. Events unfold, a story is told, as Jones compellingly vents his confusion and anxiety about the state of the world.

Locust Jones exhibits throughout New Zealand and Australia, and has had solo exhibitions in New York, Germany, and Lebanon. He has participated in artists residencies in Lebanon, Beirut and New York. He is the winner of the Hazelhurst works on paper award in 2009 and the Dominik Mersch Gallery Award 2010. He has works held in numerous public and private collections throughout New Zealand and Australia.

DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY AWARD is an annual award in collaboration with the University of Sydney ? Sydney College of the Arts. As part the award, DOMINIK MERSCH GALLERY provides an exhibition space in the gallery to show one or more artists from Sydney College of the Arts. A panel selects the artist from SCA's end of year Postgraduate Degree Show. "Offering an exhibition space to show their works, is the best way to support young and promising artists" says Dominik Mersch. According to best practice in Europe and the USA, such awards are very important to give young artists a head start.

Dean of SCA, Prof Colin Rhodes said, "This is a great collaboration between one of Sydney's top contemporary galleries and one of the country's best art schools. It gives an opportunity for one of our best to reach a wide, appreciative audience."