Decade on Fire

Rafael R. Pilsczek, born in 1968, always looks into the lives of individual people in his works and draws conclusions about life itself. His painterly oeuvre impresses by sending out hundreds of human emotional signals. Decade on Fire invites us to think for ourselves, to rejoice as well as to be afraid in times that have become dark, in which nothing is as certain as it was long before. The diversity of his oeuvre is both frightening and powerful, as well as an indication that his personality intertwines writing, filmmaking and painting, and that it is in painting that his innermost views of the world are most radically represented. Without looking at guidelines, rules and norms, a unique collection has been created that interweaves the moods of the decade from 2013 to 2023.

Born on the left bank of the Lower Rhine, owner of PPR Hamburg, the painter has lived in Hamburg for over thirty years. His feature film The New and Neverending Walk had its world premiere at the Hotel Atlantic in spring 2024. In addition to painting, Rafael R. Pilsczek has written fourteen books in a significant parallel world that draw on many genres and have always shown that the search for answers can be more important than having an answer to the world pressing questions.The art volume documents ten years of a rich life that was full of contradictions and sensitively anticipated the upheavals of the present in form, color and style. Without lapsing into a dystopian life, the paintings in oil, acrylic and graphite also show the joie de vivre and joy with which Pilsczek resisted the forebodings.