13 November, 2025 – 10 January, 2026
Exhibition
Daniel Karrer
Aw: Aw: Aw:
November 13 - January 10, 2025
Opening Thursday, November 13, 6-8pm
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present Aw: Aw: Aw:, Swiss artist Daniel Karrer’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and first in the United States.
Employing a technique that challenges traditional painting methods, Karrer’s compositions are rendered on the reverse side of glass panels. A wet-on-wet brush allows free application of paint through all layers, erasure, and movement of existing strokes. The conventional sequence of painting - background to fore - is largely ignored.
The glass becomes the final skin of the painting with its slick, non-porous quality paradoxically coating highly textured surfaces rich with visible brushwork and layered applications. In an age of constant digital interface, where glass mediates our daily experience through screens, and glass becomes ubiquitous, the material is a base for his painterly investigation.
The subjects themselves hover between abstraction and figuration, with individual works tipping toward one more than others. And his highly gestural, energetic brushstrokes activate otherwise still images, creating a sense of movement within each piece.
The features of each landscape appear fantastical —particularly with their brooding skies, dramatic cliffs, and otherworldly terrain. For us, they evoked the atmospheric depths of Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks among other backdrops of the High Renaissance.
Encased in wooden frames, the compositions are windows onto imagined worlds as well as a record of its own making. Aw: Aw: Aw: presents painting as both object and portal.
Artist Bio
Daniel Karrer is a painter who lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. He received his BA and MA in Fine Arts from Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel. Karrer has had a number of solo exhibitions, most recently at Spencer Brownstone Gallery. NY, USA, Tony Wuethrich Galerie in Basel, Switzerland, Barbara Seiler Galerie in Zürich Switzerland, and Ung5 in Köln Germany. Karrer's work has also been featured in many group exhibitions including shows in Switzerland, Germany, Paris, and London. Karrer received the Kulturförderpreis Alexander Clavel-Stiftung award, the STRABAG Art award, and the Collection Cahiers d’Artistes from ProHelvetia. He is part of the collection at Museum zu Allerheiligen Schaffhausen, Schweizerische Nationalbank, Credit Suisse, and the CCA Andratx in Spain, among others.