Sebastian Schrader takes us on a painterly journey that constantly changes direction in order to train our ‘sense of possibility’ (Robert Musil) on a never-ending search for new shores.
To some extent, his works of recent years could be described as still lifes, spaces where time stands still and where the interweaving of figurative and abstract elements creates a presence of a purely pictorial nature. It is difficult to describe Schrader’s paintings. While they incorporate visual references to recent media imagery, their focus clearly lies on fabrics. Whether parts of a human figure or dried flowers, their motifs are always ensconced in accumulations of textiles, which the artist stages as sculpturally legitimate counterparts to reality. Yet everything in these images is painted, not collaged. Abrasions are simulated by means of varnish paint, and even the finest of lines are drawn with brush and oil paint so as to evoke the brittleness of oil pastel chalk. In Schrader’s attempts to overcome formal boundaries, painterly and graphic elements, flatness and folds, lightness and darkness overlap.

– Christoph Tannert in Dissonance: Platform Germany