A Swiss artist, Andy Denzler is known for a body of work that includes sculptures, paintings and drawings. His distinctive technique of distorting the freshly applied surface of his paintings has shaped his entire oeuvre in painting, printmaking, sculpture and drawing.

Born in 1965 in Zurich, Denzler trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the F+F Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich, both schools of applied arts, as well as at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. In 2006, he graduated as Master of Fine Arts from London's Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Denzler's work combines nostalgic photorealism with gestural expression by alternating bands of unmoving, impastoed detail with flowing horizontal sweeps of his brush. As he explained, he is concerned with addressing time and evoking a narrative through composition, light, and motion, alternating between static, thick marks and blurred, flowing sweep. The human figure remains at the core of his explorations, depicting them in their intimacy all the while remaining anonymous. Pulling the paint with a spatula or a palette knife to reveal a distorted image, frozen in time, between abstraction and figuration, his paintings evoke images rendered by a paused VHS tape or other digital glitches.

Featured image: Andy Denzler - Titian Red Girl, 2015 (detail). Oil on canvas. 47 1/4 x 55 in. 120 x 139.7 cm. Photo courtesy Berry Campbell Gallery

Andy Denzler

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