Christian Awe

Christian Awe’s water paintings awaken the broadest range of associations regarding water - water on the one hand as source of life and symbol of purity, while on the other also representing a hurdle and untamable force of nature, as for the many thousands who have fled their homes to risk their lives on their journey to freedom traversing the Mediterranean. Awe’s water paintings appear three dimensionally as if it is a real water-drop, easily to be mistaken as photography or print. His layered works looking like a wild spark of energy, in reality are a created gesture, emerged from a calculated long process of removal.

Being born in Berlin in 1978, Christian Awe studied at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and is an internationally renowned artist with exhibitions across the globe. The basics of painting such as color, contrast and composition are the center point of his color intense, complex artworks. It is the urban, the pulsing life, and the people in big cities like Berlin, Ouagadougou and New York that provide him with his most vital sources of inspiration. His paintings, predominantly large-scale works, consist of up to 15 layers. In applying and partially removing the individual layers, Awe creates complex paintings exhibiting his signature formal language. Awe’s works, an inexhaustible source of new and surprising discoveries, continually invite the observer to linger, to examine and contemplate – just a little bit longer.
Christian Awe holds lectures and teaches at several educational institutions and universities. Also, he is devoted to numerous social and cultural projects focused on education, integration and health – in Germany, the Middle East and Africa.