Innen und Aussen 1991

Siegfried Zademack made "Innen und Aussen" with oil paint, it feels like a puzzle of perception and form. The tones are muted, lots of ochre and earth tones, a limited palette that somehow makes the image more intense, more internal. Look at how the figure strains against its own skin, which is peeling away like old wallpaper. The skin seems almost like a costume and underneath is, well, more costume: a wooden mannequin, a crude mechanical stand-in for life. It brings to mind the work of Philip Guston, who used to embrace a similar tension between figuration and raw, emotional expression, a kind of raw vulnerability laid bare. Zademack seems to ask, what is inside and what is outside? What’s hidden and what’s revealed, especially when the revealed is just another layer of artifice? It’s this kind of unsettling question, this visual paradox, that keeps me looking and wondering.