Yearning

New York City, 2015 / Washington D.C., 2014

For the exhibition Yearning: Sehnsucht, Oskar Stocker made portraits of 22 Styrians who live in foreign countries. What they all have in common is an experience of yearning, whether for a place or people, or simply heartache and homesickness. This is also connected to wanderlust. The exhibition looks for differences and commonalities, bringing the artist in contact with people living in the most diverse corners of the world. Oskar Stocker meets them on equal footing.

He paints his subjects with a striking choice of materials and at times in outsize format. Guido Schlimbach, artistic director of St. Peter’s, a church and art center in Cologne, puts it aptly: “A century after the crisis of the portrait as an obligatory academic discipline, it will emerge once more as a possible subject. In times in which almost all portraits are created by the digital media, portrait art has become an exciting and interesting alternative for quite a few modern artists. One of them is undoubtedly Oskar Stocker”

From Facing Nations, Begegnung auf Augenhöhe, Guido Schlimbach, artistic director Kunststation St. Peter, Cologne, 2008.