Narratives of people in a complex and mysterious world

Stefan Stichler is a storyteller who knows how to captivate the viewers of his pictorial narrations. Each of his paintings seems like a modern fairy tale about people in ambiguous situations. The scenes appear enigmatic, mysterious, sometimes outrageous, a little removed from the world. Often, they can only be identified as contemporary through specific attributes of modern life such as cell phones or shopping bags. The protagonists themselves seem strangely isolated, completely absorbed in the moment, their reality an island in the raging sea of the present.

The artist, who was born in Marburg in 1972 and initially trained as a carpenter before devoting himself entirely to fine art later on, now lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf. He usually gives his pictures speaking titles that suggest a line of thought for reading the stories, but without reducing the mysteriousness in the slightest. A whole spectrum of interpretations opens up when, for example, two young women, dressed as if on their way to school or to a club – not always clearly distinguishable today – both equipped with sticks that cannot be interpreted in more detail, purposefully follow a path that dissolves into a diffuse nothingness, heading for or passing a skull, and all this is summarized under the title Das Vorhaben (The Plan). The scene could be taken from a dream, appearing surreal and poetic at the same time, a combination of coming of age and film noir. Stefan Stichler's images have a narrative power of cinematic quality, painted novellas that head towards an unheard-of event that is only revealed on the last pages of the story – on the pages that the viewer writes himself, when he leads the story to his own resolution.

Learn more about the artist Stefan Stichler.