Cornelius Völker German, b. 1965

With a distinctive method of handling paint that is simultaneously fluid and precise, German artist Cornelius Völker chooses traditional genres — the still-life and portraiture — to explore and decode the history of representational painting.

Frequently involving subject matter that was used by painters for centuries to best exhibit their proficiency — hair, hands, flesh, glass, food — Völker’s works blur traditional distinctions between genres, each painting becoming both a still life and a portrait. Whether or not actually figurative, nearly every work that Völker paints refers to the body: pills to ingest, ointments to rub into the skin, viscous fluids, cigarette stubs or half eaten fruit.

Cornelius Völker was born in Kronach, Germany in 1965 and studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He is a professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Münster.