If you want to do something good for yourself, you can go to the Buchheim Museum in Bernried.
It currently shows the colorful pictures by Leif Trenkler.
And above all they are: beautiful.
And make you happy.
Anyone who wants to do something good for themselves goes to Bernried. The soundtrack for the exhibition, which awaits you in the Buchheim Museum there, blows through the open terrace door. Sounds like a cliché: rustling leaves, chirping birds, children's laughter, dog barking and - is that a ship's horn? From Lake Starnberg the melange of summery tones flutters up into the tower room, and for that moment everything feels comfortably beautiful. Like in a picture by Leif Trenkler.
It is very fortunate that the artist, who was born in Wiesbaden in 1960, is being honored here, in the Museum of Fantasy, with his first solo exhibition in a museum.
Because if you look closely, you can see that Trenkler secretly seduces us into fantasy work in each of his photorealistic works.
Seen from a distance, boys and girls are playing by the river, a couple walks through the forest, their dog runs in the leaves.
But with every step towards the work, the illusion becomes more visible: Trenkler only hints at his figures, these are not finely crafted faces, the hint is enough - our brains do the rest.
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Leif Trenkler in the show.
© Buchheim Museum
It also works so well because the artist shows us images from our living environment. They are scenes like from a Hollywood film, reminiscent of David Hockney, Pop Art, Bauhaus, Le Corbusier. And almost everything shimmers: water. He is in his element there. Although it could have cost him his life: As a child, Leif Trenkler almost drowned in a lake once. A near-death experience that is reflected in each of his painted waters. And no matter how shallow they appear, no matter how seductively azure and smooth the surfaces - there is always an ambiguity. What is lurking in the deep? What happens when the kids jump in? Can you swim at all?
Trenkler, the painting revolutionary, has turned away from an understanding of art, according to which the sight of a work always has to hurt.
He too goes where it hurts.
But don't repel the viewer with provocative ugliness.
His works are invitations to the eye that one falls for immediately.
Beauty as bait.
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At the “Hotel International” (2020) you can mentally check-in while looking at this picture.
Time and again, water plays a role in Leif Trenkler's work.
© VG Bild Bonn
Trenkler always chooses the wrong way.
Oil on birch.
You just have to see it live.
And you can do it here extensively - this too: tingling happiness after all these months.
Because only when you take a closer look at the works of art do you recognize the fine grain that shimmers through the colors.
The fragility of the moment is also visible here.
The sofa is still to come. Museum director Daniel J. Schreiber would like to place an oversized one in the middle of the exhibition space in the tower room. You sit there and feel like you're in the light-flooded living room of an art collector. On the long side hangs “The Visit of the Beautiful Lady” (2020). A woman, a pool, a pink air mattress. But - typically Trenkler - the blonde protagonist of this scene does not allow herself to be drifted dolce-vita-like on the water - the artist breaks the often seen, expected image. Lost in thought, she hangs her upper body on the mattress, her head buried in the plastic. You can literally smell the wet plastic, feel the wind blowing over your bare back. It also rushes through the palm leaves at the edge of the pool. So not a perfect windless day. It is, as in all of his work,a snapshot from a story that we are allowed to develop ourselves.
The Leif Trenkler exhibition is based on the wonderful illustrated book "Beauty"
We don't find big faces anywhere.
If the figures are in the foreground, they turn their eyes away - or Trenkler sets the image section so that the head cannot be seen at all.
These sometimes extreme focussing intensify the cinematographic effect and appear to be zoomed in on by a camera.
This is how the fantastic game with abstraction and reality succeeds.
With large faces, it would be immediately apparent.
By leaving them out, Trenkler draws us closer.
We like to go online with him.
Until October 10th at the Buchheim Museum, Am Hirschgarten 1, Bernried. The catalog that inspired the show was published by Hirmer Verlag and can be bought here at the local dealer around the corner