Andy Denzler, After Goya

Andy Denzler, THE GOYA PROJECT, 2024, KÖNIG BERGSON, Photo by Simon Haseneder, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE

By CORI HUTCHINSON October 17, 2024

Rendered in the painter’s known oil technique, replete with sweeping bands that ripple otherwise frozen scenes, Andy Denzler presents a new body of work that studies and recasts the work of Spanish master Francisco de Goya (1746–1828). Turbulation and color-muting span all sixteen paintings represented in this capsule now on view at König Munich. The texture of two centuries between, buzzing with pixels of historical reality, finds visual representation in the style and selection of Denzler.

In a continuation of prior projects, Denzler’s wet-on-wet process stretches horizontally across the canvas, trailing forms into each other. Gestural layers defy chronology, although representation remains formally intact like a trick. The visual trace of modern media phenomena such as digital distortion is mapped onto the studies. The desaturation of Goya into values of black and white in most paintings yields further interference, although traces of color, pink underlayer, and cool shadows are present.

Andy Denzler, THE GOYA PROJECT, 2024, KÖNIG BERGSON, Photo by Simon Haseneder, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE

There is a nod to coeval reproduction in the artist’s selection of Goya primaries. Goya’s twin maja portraits, clothed and unclothed, double by Denzler’s hand as Mayas. Both 1815 self-portraits at age 69 hang in blurred yet familiar balance. Beyond this versioning, the Goya’s Fire series gestures toward both major and minor Goya in fractured reassemblage.

The four Mayas, after The Nude Maja and The Clothed Maja in classical goddess recline, with versions in muted grayscale and dimmed color, populate in variation. The account of Goya’s refusal to layer his own nude painting, and instead producing a second version, is exaggerated by Denzler here. The artist’s smart technique finds these figures somewhere between clothed and unclothed, sleeved and unsleeved.

Andy Denzler, THE GOYA PROJECT, 2024, KÖNIG BERGSON, Photo by Simon Haseneder, Courtesy of the artist & KÖNIG GALERIE

Denzler’s The Second of May, 1808 and A Procession of Flagellants are arguably the most obscured without censor. The noise achieved by Denzler’s effect heightens action, unifying individual figures to chaotic temporal movement in a collective smear. The brush of the artist reduces and elevates the scene to stroke, as a camera captures light in the direction of movement of the hand holding it. 

The urgency with which Denzler completed these paintings (2021–2024) echoes Goya’s bursts of necessary productivity to depict war, occupation, uprising, and age. The indeterminate resolution of Denzler’s technique flickers both past and present in the work, trading close detail for contemporary resonance. An exhibition video component furthers reference to cinematic motion and remixability.  WM