To Live is to Love by David Stein, Hong Kong / Switzerland
“Paintings are there to be experienced … [they] are not to be reasoned with, they are not to be understood, they are to be recognized.” David Stein agrees with John Hoyland, one of Britain’s leading abstract painters.
Color, light and emotion drive David Stein`s painting to new levels of abstraction in his third exhibition in Hong Kong: To Live is to Love. Painting is an obsession for Stein which conveys his idea of "from the real world to the dream world”. He is a good practitioner of “plein air” painter who plays with natural light and shade. Stein employs a wide range of colors in his work, but usually limits the hues in the paintings. Color and tough brushstrokes express the intense emotions which inspire him. “The interplay of light and shade shows my belief that light can emanates from every direction no matter how dark it is”, Stein says, “You don`t need to paint. It's there. What I do is to depict them according to what I see. Sometimes it takes months and sometimes years but ultimately it will be out, suddenly but seamlessly, like the early spring water flow through the mountains.” […] “I want my paintings to light up people`s life – to show people something they haven`t recognized in themselves.”
“We are always afraid of something and busy searching for meanings in our lives. Dark side undoubtedly exists in ourselves but if people look at my paintings and see the interplay of colors and light and feel the dynamic movements, they can feel something positive and beautiful.” […] "I don't have a style that can be easily categorized because my life experience is always changing, just like my paintings. But what keeps unchangeable is a beam of bright light in the paintings and the sensation of hope.”
David Stein, a widely traveled Hong Kong-based Swiss artist, is as complicated as his paintings – deeply spiritual, serious, quirky and devilish. His work is in collections in Hong Kong, America, Israel, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Turkey, Thailand, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland and the Vatican.
“We have been refused to look and enjoy abstract relationships, colors and forms, however we enjoy music without any questions. Nobody would ask: ‘Does music have meaning?’ The meaning is about the emotion but we don’t need to interpret those feelings. So it is with painting.”