Picture: 204.3 x 136 cm
«The most beautiful summers are often also the most painful. We rarely feel more alive.
And at the end of those summers, we're reminded all the more strongly that everything
passes. Looking at Philipp Keel's new works for "Last Summer", I notice the absence -
apart from a nude - of people. Instead, there are still lives and above all pictures of
palms, pools, drinks, initially seeming cool and summery, plus many captured moments
and incidental poetry. Common to them all is the artist's eye for specific details and
moods, and yet on closer inspection we can sense the melancholy permeating many of
his works. At times, the moment has already passed or is only visible on the blurred
margins of our consciousness. What remains is a feeling of transience, perhaps even a
faint touch of loneliness.
One of the great strengths of these works is that the pictures stay subtle and reserved.
We each find in them what we wish to find. In some, the melancholy is light-hearted, little
more than a gentle, not unpleasant tug at a taut string somewhere deep inside us. Yet in
others there is more to it. 'Last Summer' takes us to a threshold. Evening has set in, a
solitary view from a veranda with a drink in hand, friends laughing in the background as
the day's last light fades. In our mind play the images of a day that passed far too
quickly, some flickering, some clear. Perhaps we feel briefly wistful, or perhaps we turn
around and go back to the others».
Benedict Wells, July 2019
