(...) Dietmar Brixy’s new paintings in the “Discover” series show visible signs of progression and maturing. Instantly recognizable to the viewer is Brixy’s compact, rich layers of paint, applied directly with his fingers, with palette knives and brushes, his utilitarian technique of dribbling, dripping, and splashing the paint, the impressions of palm and fig leaves. The viewer initially finds him or herself in front of an intoxicating textural and visual experience that oscillates between figuration and abstraction. This time too, horizontal and vertical trails of paint boldly cut across the canvas, opening up windows and arenas in which the artist demonstrates his consummate handling – now intensified – of the paint, its materiality and visual impact.
In places, these open, incredibly nuanced fields of colour “speak” to the spectator and, rainbow-like, seem composed of shifting colours, in other places they appear rough, napped and scrubbed, furling up at the edges to create viscous waves. And on top of this there are the simultaneous effects of vibrating colour and the broadening of Brixy’s palette. The artist experiments with strong contrasts of light and dark. His skill in repeatedly rendering visible luminosity, the push and pull of light and shadow, is particularly striking here. And in all this, Dietmar Brixy still manages to preserve his secret as a painter: the mystery of the astonishing reverberations that linger after the unchecked physical forces released in creating his compositions. (...)