Art: The Magic of the Swarms

By

Albrecht Behmel

The Magic of the Swarms is a series of paintings by award-winning artist and writer Albrecht Behmel. In contemporary art, style and innovation are everything. A unique way to conjure endless elegant designs, The Magic of the Swarms merges individual forms of animals into hypnotic conglomerates of colours and shapes.

The Magic of the Swarms is unpredictable. Every new work of art starts as a mere outline and in in the process of arrangement and coloration the character of the painting changes permanentely. To capture the grace of moving animals is the artist’s main objective – a snapshot through a kaleidoscope.

For Albrecht, performing the Magic of the Swarms is like solving a jigsaw puzzle: oddly shaped interlocking pieces form a harmonious complete picture. There are endless possibilities, but eventually, there can be only one painting.

Albrecht Behmel: “I assemble colorful silhouettes into complex worlds of myth and magic. All kinds of stories take place here, some sad, some funny. You will find superheroes like Batman and The Hulk filled with the outlines of their mortal enemies, others, like Tony Stark are quite literally “full of themselves”; I create eternally hungry sharks circling each other, stampeding horses, cities and dreamlike landscapes made of leaves, blossoms, vegetables and fruits.

I call this style “The Magic of the Swarms” or “Abstrahism”, which is a term I invented to express this mix of abstract forms stemming from real-world shapes, just like a shadow abstractly represents a 3D body on a 2D surface. Something is lost, something is won. Abstrahism is about the connectedness of all beings however different they may seem – like in a kaleidoscope where known forms melt into something new every time they move. Once I have established a net of shapes and outlines on canvas I add powerful acrylic colors (they poison me less than oil) following an algorithm in my mind: As in a musical fugue I create an interweaving pattern of main themes, parts and variations within a grid of shapes and silhouettes.”

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Central Park

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Manhattan

Magic Mountain

Albrecht Behmel

Albrecht Behmel is a German artist, novelist, historian, best-selling non-fiction writer and award-winning playwright. His works have recently been exhibited at the Carrousel du Louvre, in Paris and forthcoming shows are planned for Miami (Art Week) and New York in April.