Christian Achenbach

Christian Achenbach , (b. 1978 in Germany, lives and works in Berlin) is a German sculptor and painter. With his artistic roots in 20th century art history, Achenbach composes his own aesthetic symphony of the known isms framed in a fresh postmodern perspective. Achenbach’s creative process lends itself to the world of musical composition where the multiplicity of violent clashing of colors and shapes emphasizes the shift of tonality, thereby conjuring a materiality of sound. Achenbach associates his love for music with that of Kandinsky’s, who once claimed that he saw colors when hearing musical tones. It can be argued that the compositions and painterly rhythms give both artists pictorial space respective ‘sounds.’ A close look at Achenbach’s art-historical quotations reveal an intelligent engagement with Modernity more precisely with Post-Modernity.

Each artwork presents the childlike joy and liberty of Achenbach’s brush with an immanent nod to the history of modern art. Modernism, Dadaism and Cubism are undeniably present in each painting where no central motif is to be found, but geometric shapes and symbols instead rhizomatically spiral in and out of each other. Much like the music in which Achenbach finds his inspiration, the definite outlines are blurry, the array of colors explosive.