Felix Becker

Becker works exclusively with oil and on various supports, ranging from linen to wooden structures, as well as paper and papier-maché structures. Becker has continuously been expanding his painterly practice into three-dimensionality over the past two years, and his paintings - already profoundly sculptural and tactile due to the artist’s use of thick impasto - have recently evolved into object-like sculpture paintings; first by applying paint onto chunks of hand-formed cardboard elements, then, during a six-month Residency in the French city of Marseille, onto wooden structures, built from disassembled farmers market boxes.

Becker’s painting always leans toward sculpture, and an undeniable sculptural presence emanates from his painting - often diluting, sometimes even erasing the line between the painterly and the sculptural.

Through applying thick layers of oil paint and layer upon layer of different colors onto the support, figures and symbols seem to appear, yet their origins, meaning, and significance remain untold, only their ghost-like shape is present, similar to an object, a character, a person only known or identifiable by the viewer. These phantom marks do not wish to be identified, and their interpretation fails us, as if spook paste was some children’s toy, its only reason to exist being to mislead us adults.