Discovering the Beauty of Failed and Fallen in Art

About the artist :

Gideon Pirx was born in 1965 to a German family of showmen in the beer town of Einbeck.

Studied civil engineering in Cairo.

After the collapse of a bridge in Dubai, fled to Transnistria, the homeland of his Kulak ancestors. Attempt to establish a "third way" and build up a lowbrow movement in Tiraspol, of which he remained the sole protagonist.

1996 Studies with the grand master of Polish surrealism Andrzej Mazur in Warsaw. 1997 Discontinued his studies with the legendary words: "Unpolitical kitsch!" Final turn to Western Europe and relocation to Berlin.

Gideon Pirx ́ painting bears witness to his cosmopolitan experiences and his deeply humanistic attitude, with which he is dedicated to the failing and falling individual.

Gideon Pirx lives and works in Hamburg. There in the studio he wrestles with himself and calls it work. According to the motto: "If ́s nothing wirx, ́s a Pirx!" he shows his heart for the failed and fallen, whether animal or human or fungus- for bunglers and dolts, morels and milksops. And even if the contemplation of these species provokes many a funny comment or even a laugh, the artist makes a point of stating that humour is only a by-product, not to say a by-product, and that compassion and humanism are actually in the foreground. And the attempt to use painterly means to peel or brush out a reliable truth from the blunders and absurdities of everyday human and animal life.

Pirx cultivates a fast, expressionistic style, often with pastose application of paint. On sometimes large formats, one senses the pleasure in the craft and the fun in the freedom in dealing with the medium.

Even if his pictorial worlds are firmly anchored in the pop-cultural universe - or rather in a kind of hippie Duckburg - one notices a stronger tendency towards autobiographical narration in recent times.

In a double somersault backwards, Gideon Pirx connects the development of painting into materiality and the possibility of inventing stories through images. Gideon Pirx is on the verge of launching a new religious community whose philosophy he summarises thus:

From Humanism through Humunism to Huminism.

In this way he creates a bracket between the old Roman wisdom of Seneca: "through the darkness to the stars" and the somewhat more recent insight of Lenin: "Communism is Soviet power plus electrification" and, as we know Gideon Pirx, he once again remains the only follower of this movement. 

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Images and text courtesy the artist.

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Images on view below:

Caption 1: 11 am | 70 x 84 cm | Oil on canvas 

Caption 2: Bigfoot saving drowning Gideon | 50 x 35 cm | Oil on canvas