Galerie Westphal opened in Prenzlauer Berg in 2009 with pictures by Carsten Kaufhold. That was a perfect fit, because Stefan Westphal is a fan of figurative art. And Kaufhold’s extremely precise pictures show subjects, especially from Berlin, which one could mistake for being photographed – although the city appears much more handsome and quiet in his paintings than it actually is.
The garbage, the graffiti and almost always the urban residents are missing. Instead, a warm, golden light draws into the scenes from the outskirts with its wild growth, the “bridge on the canal” or from Neukölln, where the artist was at home all his life. From there, from the Kunstverein, came the recommendation more than a decade ago to take a closer look at the pictures. Westphal did it, after that Kaufhold was one of the “closest tribe of artists in the gallery and artist friends”. The gallery owner has now announced that Kaufhold, born in 1967, died unexpectedly at the end of July.
With him, Berlin loses a sensitive chronicler of recent history. Kaufhold, who studied at the University of the Arts from 1989 to 1995, repeatedly set out with his 35mm camera to capture the play of light and shadow on the asphalt or along the facades. In his studio on the ground floor, where a plasterer once had a shop, he later transformed the snapshots into timeless impressions. Not necessarily representative: the artist preferred to photograph the sharp lines of unadorned houses than the magnificent old buildings. But the mood in his carefully composed acrylic paintings awakens a feeling of longing, as is usually the case with Mediterranean landscape views in particular.
There were many opportunities to immerse oneself in Kaufhold’s always slightly melancholic motifs. Stefan Westphal regularly invited him to solo and group exhibitions, and later the Berlin gallery Knauber was added. The artist had solo shows in other regions of Germany such as Ahrenshoop and was appreciated in Switzerland. In 2016, pictures could be seen at the same time in the Gasag art space and in the Haus des Rundfunks. The following year, Kaufhold was awarded the Neukölln Art Prize. A confirmation in times when few people paint objectively and hardly anyone paints in a similar old masterly way: with a vanishing point, scale, precise perspectives and a preliminary drawing with a pocket calculator and ruler. Many of the houses, cafés and green courtyards look familiar, some can even be found again. Even if the paintings have anonymous titles such as “Straße 24” (2010) or “Blue Bank” (2015).
“The opposite of abstract” is the name of one of the most recent exhibitions opened by the Miltenbach auction house in Lower Franconia in November 2021. A large individual presentation in Bad Saarow is planned for the coming year, says gallery owner Westphal. He now has to organize it without his artist friend Carsten Kaufhold.
