While in many ways connected to the underlying principles of automatic drawing, Igor Hosnedl’s practice might initially appear to depart from the medium. Compositions that first emerge in small-scale drawings are transformed into monumental paintings characterised by sharp outlines and intense, dark tonalities. This feature also underscores the strong graphic qualities that underpin Hosnedl’s painting practice.
At the core of Hosnedl’s work there is a process of radical reduction. His distilled, crystallised network of motifs emerges through a method of extensive stylisation rooted in drawing. Alongside the totemic figures, the spaces he creates play a central role in the linear image systems of his work. Hosnedl invokes the compositional structures of metaphysical painting by constructing space through symbolic surfaces. These spaces appear as theatrical stages, establishing backgrounds and foregrounds for his figures and lending the works a magical, fable-like quality. Symbols emerging from the artist’s subconscious become subjects for the viewer’s own associations and interpretations. Both his iconography and compositional structures point towards a practice that reinterprets and hybridises the traditions of Surrealist and metaphysical painting.
Although Hosnedl’s works are shaped by multiple layers of abstraction and transformation, they remain strongly figurative. His approach to redefining figuration is informed by the visual grammar of graphic design, including that of computer games. His paintings evoke a sense of timelessness, within which Surrealist symbol-centrism and metaphysical constructions of space unfold in a state of suspended, silent eternity.