Torsten Holtz – Half of Life Is Spent Waiting

(Bilingual catalog, ISBN-10: 3925782680 / ISBN-13: 978-3925782688, hardcover, 48 pages)

From 31 March 2011 to 4 June 2011, the young Berliner artist Torsten Holtz had his first exhibition at Die Galerie Frankfurt, and to the occasion the gallery published this catalog featuring texts by Volker Stelzmann, Maren Kirchhoff and Damiano Femfert.

I translated the text from German into English. The piece below was in the exhibition (and sold).

Hundeherz / Dogheart
2011, Oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm

Over at Mutual Art, they more or less said the following about the exhibit: "The first solo exhibition of the Berlin artist Torsten Holtz (b. 1973) presented by DIE GALERIE in Frankfurt/Main features a broad selection of about 30 works, created by the young painter between 2004 and 2011. The show allows the viewer to trace the artistic development of the master student of Volker Stelzmann, and to experience an intensive encounter with Holtz' pictorial world. At first glance his portrayals of figures seem to be easily comprehensible, but upon longer reflection they begin to bemuse, unsettle, and pose riddles. The artist's figures watch and wait, silent in quite isolation, and radiate a peculiar, distanced lack of emotion. 'Half of Life Is Spent Waiting,' explains the artist, who sees the moments of humanity's existential emptiness described in the literary works of Beckett, Charms, and Bukowski as the key to his painting. True reality and Torsten Holtz' fantastic imagination intermesh to create a form of Magic Realism that is firmly anchored in the here and now of the 21st century."