Michael Horsky (born in 1973 in Prague ; lives and works in Vienna, Austria)

Michael Horsky’s paintings seem crystallized from some sort of chromatic primeval slime. Constellations of motifs that leave everything obvious behind them—art history/role models/the good idea—appear on the canvas, though not before countless other images have been shaken off, discarded. Horsky draws from deeply hidden inner networks of knowledge and feeling, as well as the inherent laws that govern them. The outer, representational pictorial structure is merely a surface to project upon, a plaything, or an indicator for the abstract processes at work behind it. Forms are liberated from the gravity of logic, not deformed; colors unfurl the wildly beguiling power of their essence; narratives shatter against the paradox of their individual parts, only to further incite intuition. Horsky's paintings are oddly captivating equivalents for a world—our world— that, despite its real, barely comprehensible madness, mysteriously manages to function and, against all reason, is capable of creating amazing beauty.

- Sonja Menches