The in-demand German artist’s work captures the most fraught and precarious scenes of New York City.
Strange and exhilarating things have been known to occur in Florian Krewer’s paintings. Under purple or blood-orange skies, young men take to the streets or dance—alluring, invincible. Dogs roam, tigers battle, and owls alight on someone’s feet like it’s the most natural thing in the world. A few years ago, naked figures appeared in poses that can only be described as pornographic. “I don’t do what people want to see,” he says.
Early one summer morning, the German painter is in his cavernous studio high up in a Bronx industrial building, discussing his resistance to being pigeonholed. He’s surrounded by a bunch of new pictures, with his signature rough planes of flat color and shocking hues, to be shown at Michael Werner Gallery in New York from September 4. Krewer, 38, is wiry, with tattoos across his arms and face. He’s wearing a blue Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, a T-shirt, and Vans. There are a few canvases sitting on the ground that he’s recently primed, a process that he half-jokingly says reminds him of his early years as a house painter in Germany. “I kind of liked it,” he says of the job, “but on the other side I thought, damn, I don’t want to do that the whole life. It’s not really challenging.”
