Performance 90 MINUTES. ONE GAME. ONE ARTWORK. @ Gallery Robert Weber 7/2014
born 1973 in Bamberg
1993 Art A Level Malvern Boys College, London
1994-1998 Grafik Design studies Munich
2001-2003 Bachelor of Fine Arts London Institute
2003- 2005 various art projects Munich
2006- 2007 classical art training Alexander Schwatz
Stephan Bentzel is an artist who is associated to expressionism by still going his own way. He is looking back on a wide ranged and extraordinary course of education. He attended schools in Germany and Great Britain followed by studies of arts in London and Munich. Since that time he has made a name for himself in Germany as a powerful expressionist looking back on numerous exhibitions and events. On 10. October 2013 he is opening his new exhibition Wege in the gallery Robert Weber. Wege is a collection of specially selected pieces out of Stephan Bentzel’s oeuvre which includes several cycles. The exhibition does not only show his artistic career but also his very own way of communicating with poeple: the art of painting. His paintings are of a great expressive richness. They are loaded with emotions; colors strengthening in their interaction cause a diverse, not fully unintelligible effect on the viewer – colors and shapes unify on the artworks to a maximum of artistic power and communication. The recipient’s eye is constantly challenged to new insights and interpretations. A close look and an intense view on his art is determined. His technique is like himself: unique, strong and expressive. He succeeds in a technically skilled act by combining the expressionistic impact with colour strength and pictorial representation using glazing and pasty painting techniques. Applied with a free selection of tools his colours are bonding with each other on the background. Letting the colours run he stops them the next time and resolves the built with chemicals in order to create his unbeatable complexity. His works unify conception with artistic freedom and technical perfection with an own always recognizable shape language loaded with strong emotion: the viewers emotions are challengend. Stephan Bentzel’s inner conflict manages it in many ways to build a new connection between painting materials, painting themes and shapes – he shows abstract and representational art and the state of mind in between – always in his very own way, always in development and in each of his cycles with highest quality. All of the pieces show a point in Stephan’s life. The sequence and the collection overall, though, show Stephan’s Wege (ways) and display the direction he will turn to.