Especially produced for the Art Basel show in Miami Beach, these paintings by Armin Boehm are based on complex narratives. The politically charged works reflect upon the current state of affairs, particularly in light of the recent wave of terrorism in Europe and the U.S. Directly inspired by the power structures revealed in the skewed relationships of the characters of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films, Boehm’s portraits depict reduced emotional relationships.
In a work entitled On the Run, a hybrid figure of a woman and an African-American man is being shot in the back by a sniper. On the right side of the picture, two antagonizing characters engage in a kiss symbolizing the loss of center politics. Boehm’s pictorial world is informed by an atmospheric intensity evoking both intimacy and alienation. The vocabulary of modernism is present in both form and content: Boehm actively appropriates the approach of the German Expressionists and their avant-garde literary tendencies.
In his works on canvas, he uses the technique of collage to conjoin fragments of paint, fabric, paper or metal; substances from which his subjects emerge almost sculpturally in concrete space.
