Florian Krewer: “Everybody’s wearing a mask”

At first sight, Florian Krewer seems out of place in Michael Werner Gallery’s new Los Angeles outpost, located in Beverly Hills across the street from Gagosian, a block off ritzy Rodeo Drive. The German-born artist rocks a fresh and clean street look, with shiny black Jordans on his feet matching a black White Sox hat on his head, his body, arms, neck and face adorned with monochrome tattoos. Krewer got most of his tattoos after moving to New York in 2020, laying bare facets of his identity, his past, and his aspirations on his skin. His bicep features a half mermaid – half sailor, designed by Simone Doig, reflecting gender fluidity. “Fear” and “Love” are emblazoned on his eyelids, inspired by similar ones on Lil Wayne reading “fear” and “God”. Two panthers prowl along his forearms. His chest is covered by a large tiger mask tattoo.

His tough exterior is softened by his reserved, somewhat timid, yet inviting, manner. We begin talking about his paintings, their formal qualities, his process and inspirations before moving onto his early life, the sturm und drang of New York, the sorry state of the world, and his love of hip-hop. Before long, his ideas about art, isolation, community, hope, and despair come spilling out almost faster than his German-accented English can keep up.

Krewer is in LA for the opening of his first West Coast solo show, ‘strike the dust’, a title that suggests an assault on the tired, regressive status quo. “It feels like, ‘damn, the world is not moving forward. In which century are we living in?’” he says. He channels this frustration obliquely rather than explicitly in his large vibrant canvases, pulling from autobiography, memory, personal photographs and found images. Twinz (2024) depicts two dogs, one black, one white, walking together, separated by a dilapidated fence against an acrid orange background. Two hooded figures, their hands bound behind them, walk towards a darkened doorway in Thunder Judges (2024), the whole scene rendered in paradoxically sunny shades of yellow. I mistake an intimate 12 x 10-inch untitled painting for an orange bear or dog swimming in a stream until Krewer tells me it is based on a 2017 news photo of a fox in a block of ice, tragically frozen solid in the Danube.

Krewer often features animals in his paintings as stand-ins for pain and pleasure. “Animals have emotions or characteristics that we as humans have too,” he explains. “Sometimes for me, it’s explained better in animals, because some topics are so heartbreaking. It gives me more space.”

Although Krewer has garnered significant attention over the past several years, his path to becoming an artist was not at all straightforward. He grew up in a number of small, conservative German towns, “a lazy child, hanging with my friends on the street, smoking a lot of weed.” A brief stint as a house painter was followed by architecture school, where a professor suggested he apply to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He was accepted and studied with Peter Doig, who Krewer says encouraged him to paint what interested him – to paint from his own life.

Krewer’s autobiography is the primary source from which he draws inspiration, but he filters, cuts up and rearranges the elements to arrive at compositions that are altogether more otherworldly. He generally begins with photos and then makes drawings from them. “Then the drawings become their own,” he explains. “I don’t want to stay too close to the photo. I want to put my emotions into the work.”

His punchy, often garish, palettes are dictated more by emotion and intuition than colour theory, though they do resonate with the Expressionists and Neo-Expressionists of the 20th century, as do his isolated figures filled with angst and ennui. Echoes of Max Beckmann, Georg Baselitz, and James Ensor are certainly visible in his work, but he relocates their modern anxieties to his post-modern life in New York or his travels in Mexico, China and New Orleans.

Masks feature prominently in Krewer’s work, symbols of both obfuscation and revelation. In New Orleans (2024), which is adapted from a photo of a Mardi Gras parade, a figure lifts a grinning mask to reveal another one with a grimace beneath, conveying a sense of universal human tragi-comedy. Time is now (2024) features Krewer, recognisable by his tattoos, trimming a Black friend’s hair, as black and white masks float in the background.

“In society, everybody’s kind of wearing a mask because how much can you be yourself?” he asks. “It’s so vulnerable.”

The club – whether it’s hip-hop, techno, or drag – is a meaningful site for Krewer, where masks can be lowered and the preconceptions and judgements of the straight world are left behind. “I feel super comfortable in the nightlife because it’s a little escape from the normal daytime,” he said. “It feels more anonymous.”

After our interview and the opening of ‘strike the dust’, the party moved to Plaza, a drag cabaret bar with a largely Latinx clientele located on La Brea Avenue, in the Hollywood Gallery district. Dealers and artists mingled inside, sipping tajin-rimmed mezcal palomas alongside the club regulars, but the art world seemed very far away. Performers took the stage and blazed through an incongruous sequence from Barry Manilow’s Copacabana, to Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust, and Adam Lambert’s banger ballad Ghost Town I stumbled outside after a few hours. Krewer responded to my farewell with dismay, embracing me as he earnestly insisted “no way you’re leaving,” despite only having met each other once, before he slipped back into the hum and thump of the club.