Ute Riese, ‘New Abstract Painting: Painting Abstract Now’, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany, exhibition catalogue, 2003

(Franz Ackermann, Ross Bleckner, Pia Fries, Bernard Frize, Katharina Grosse, Lori Hersberger, Stefan Hirsig, Dennis Hollingsworth, Gary Hume, Jacqueline Humphries, Sergej Jensen, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Stephan Jung, Jonathan Lasker, Fabian Marcaccio, Sarah Morris, Frank Nitsche, Fiona Rae, David Reed, Daniel Richter, DJ Simpson, Michael Stubbs, Philip Taaffe, Juan Usle, Christoph Wedding, Robert Zandvliet, Peter Zimmerman)

To create his abstract pictures Michael Stubbs (born 1961) pours tinted transparent floor lacquers onto brightly primed sheets.  Partly covering them with stencils and turning them around while the colours are still merging he controls the compositional process.

Into such abstract pictorial worlds produced by flowing pools of colour and the superimposition of transparent shades of colour, he frequently used to integrate in his early work concrete forms such as stylized illustrations of food, for instance orange slices or legs of lamb, though also moveable arabesques and decorative objects.  In this way he fused the pictorial-discursive stylistic elements of pop art with methods of painting and design surfaces which favour elegant perfection, as for instance the spilling and pouring of colours in the manner of (Sigmar) Polke.

“Technical resources in these paintings are at the service of a razor sharp clarity and paradoxically a viscous liquidity, both held together in a precarious balancing act” (David Ryan).  Whereas in the earlier pictures large parts of the light background which interacted with the coloured formations were left untouched, in his most recent large sized pictures Stubbs has been more intensively working with monochrome backgrounds which are capable of generating landscape associations as well, but are subverted by playful or ironic pop elements such as letters and drops of colour.