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Olaf Quantius
- "Danaiden" The contrived paintings of Olaf Quantius irritate the viewer. With their large number of varied elements, the eye tries to find some meaningful order in the composition of amorphous forms and moving characters, the sprays and the streaks of paint. The paintings' landscape formats are often exaggerated by wide monochrome bands at the top and bottom margins of the pictures. In all of the 'Danaiden' works there are two elements apparently moving towards the centre, at constant risk of inevitably colliding with one another. This acknowledgement - reflected by their shapes - dominates at first the events in the picture. The painting style they have been given is vaguely reminiscent of real objects. However, any association with true objects is immediately destroyed by the abstraction of the brush strokes and splashes of paint around the borders of the canvas. Within this, in the composed centre of the image, the empty space where little paint has been applied becomes an unusually intense field of tension. It is the result of an intentional use of various painting techniques, deliberately allowing the viewer to see the traces of the process of creation. In this manner, sprays of paint become violent eruptions, varnished smudges signs of enormous speed, and pasty spots threatening foreign bodies. It can not be concluded that the 'Danaiden' paintings are strict illustrations of mythological scenarios. The story of Danaiden, the fiftieth daughter of King Danaos of the sagas, tells of her wicked deed (on her wedding night she stabbed her husband at her father's command) and her sentencing to perform the endless, useless task of collecting water in a bucket full of holes. It is easier to understand the title's hint at a mythological image, as a description of Olaf Quantius' deeply existentialist art and understanding of life as expressed through his painting. With regard to the artistic, creative process, the endless repetition of the task and the constant loss of the water being collected speak of the insatiable desire for self assurance in the face of a lack of progressive questions and suggestions in painting. |
  
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