Pascal Möhlmann: touches of modernity and dramatism

Pascal Möhlman’s work represents baroque art in a new modern era immersed in virtual chaos and chronic distraction in real life. We delve into his paintings, and zoom in on his new collection “Hiec et Nunc”, in which he configures a whole hyper-realistic and disturbing composition of alter-egos created in oil.

The Zurich artist is halfway between baroque art and social networks, capturing in his creations classical references reimagined through modernity. A distinctive style in constant search of “the new beauty” with which he dilutes all those stimuli of real life in existential paintings set in contemporary landscapes.

Möhlman’s style is thus inspired by a love for the real and tangible beauty of the world, as a recreation of what he sees around him, either in person or through the screen. In this sense, he reflects through his works instantaneous stories of love or tragedy with personalities who are experiencing live that drama and dynamism. His paintings emerge and transcend from the work itself.

“HIEC ET NUNC”

All that visual identity and/or creative self-expression is now transferred to his new collection “HIEC ET NUNC“, in which the artist reflects on chance or destiny in a series of surprising and unfortunate accidents that fall on the canvas.

Through this series of full-scale paintings, a series of themes inspired by current trends such as the return of the Y2K effect, skater fashion or tattoo culture, are channeled in the form of dramatic exploration. A whole series of references and underlying paradoxes of the present fused with that inspiration in the past: in baroque painting and in the canvases of artists such as Van Dyck or Caravaggio.

In some of these pop-inspired works, their painted alter-egos represent the strange and dystopian society in which we live. They dress up as Powell Peralta skate brand ripper t-shirts, collide with trees, or look at the viewer with dismay in the midst of tragic episodes with skeletons that symbolize the ephemerality of the human experience.

Pascal then addresses all those themes that he dilutes in his works, such as the climate crisis, the fact of living in a perpetual state of distraction, as well as our obsession with the internet, with superficiality, or our incessant thirst for the material.