Aurel K. Basedow, one half of design duo Draga and Aurel, employs a variety of skills that he has acquired over the past 30 years: carpentry, crafts, dyeing, and design, to create his large scale mixed media abstract paintings. Seemingly spontaneous and complex, the unique artworks express an almost meditative energy, maintaining a balance of chaos and control. Basedow’s paintings, which have a strong connection to Abstract Expressionism, play with superimpositions. Much like the design work of “Draga and Aurel”, Basedow considers resin his true symbolic signature material. Each composition is the product of multiple layers of mixed media, built up and sealed in place by layers of thick resin. The geometric lines, the transfer of pigments, the brush strokes: each gesture is a result of the previous one creating a final collage like a visual representation of time. The artist uses Afghan, Moroccan and Persian rugs, cement, paint, photos and drawings — the result of continuous research. Each of his paintings is living matter in continuous evolution. Basedow says, “It is thanks to resin that the works reflect the outside world, act as a mirror to those who observe them, and become a metaphor for looking inward.”

Born in Munich in 1963, Basedow completed a degree in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. In 2007 he opened the Draga & Aurel studio with his wife Draga Obradovic. It quickly drew attention because of its ingenious customized reinvention of vintage design items. In 2015, Aurel felt an urgent need to return to painting and began furiously at his atelier in Como, Italy.