Melancholic Optimism: Antony Valerian’s Infinite Paintings at the Edge of the World
by Oliver Körner von Gustorf
Everyone is familiar with those science documentaries—mostly BBC productions—available online, telling the story of the dinosaurs. Laboriously, they evolve from prehistoric bony fish, developing over millions of years into marine reptiles, flying reptiles, amphibians (which are not related to them), and various plant- and meat-eating dinosaurs on land. They graze and feed for more endless millions of years. But time and again, they are wiped out by climate catastrophes, earthquakes, and gas clouds—only to reemerge, even larger and more powerful, until, finally, 65 million years ago, they are extinguished by a meteorite the size of Mount Everest.
Antony Valerian’s series of small-format paintings With every single line moving further out in time (2025) shows scenes that could evoke these monumental extinctions. In undefined, silvery or brown-tinged color spaces reminiscent of William Turner, dinosaurs appear—like illustrations from a textbook or a set of toys. There’s the Brontosaurus, the Stegosaurus, the Archaeopteryx, the T-Rex—often indicated only in outlines or loose brushstrokes. And even the abstract landscapes—hazy, clouded, smoky, like after fires or volcanic eruptions—are not as ethereal as they may first appear. They consist of layers of paint that have been pushed around, forming translucent smears, pasty formations, and bubbles. The paint behaves like a geological phenomenon itself—as if it were molten and hot, cooling and solidifying, capturing time like a layer of sediment.
With his dinosaur paintings, Antony Valerian takes on a subject that is thoroughly taboo in fine art. While dinosaur depictions once inspired 19th-century science and attracted mass audiences at world’s fairs, while they have populated generations of fantasies in film history—from King Kong (1933) to the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World series—they have played virtually no role in the history of painting. Dinosaur imagery is denied the status of serious art—precisely because it is so popular among children and in mass culture.
But the hard lesson we learn even as children, when we become fascinated by extinct dinosaurs, mummies, and lost cultures, is that we ourselves are mortal—and may one day be dug up by others wondering how we once lived. When children identify with dinosaurs—with the monstrous, the cruel, the wild—they’re also drawn to the idea of their own death, to the possibility of being subdued by a greater, perhaps higher, force. And these thoughts are not just childlike. In an era where war and AI threaten to wipe out humanity, it may also occur to some adults that the Anthropocene, in relation to the age of the dinosaurs, has lasted barely the blink of an eye.
In Valerian’s painting, however, the real event is how gently and fearlessly it approaches the possibility of extinction, the relentless advance of time, and the futility of human existence—including painting itself. The exhibition title Schwarzwälder Kirsch (Black Forest Cherry) may ironically refer to the layering of paint or the seductive appeal of Valerian’s images. But it also suggests something festive, childlike, everyday. Beneath the brown and silver tones, an endless array of colors glimmers. Volcanic and cosmic debris rains down on the dying dinosaurs like confetti: Congratulations, you made it! Something new, something completely unexpected begins. UFOs land, new paintings are made. In Valerian’s images of a vanishing species, there is lightness, acceptance, even a joyful anticipation of an unknown, astonishing future.
One large-format painting by Valerian, glowing in dark brown and orange, shows a gigantic tree, deep within which sit owls—hybrids of the mythological creature symbolizing wisdom and nocturnal darkness, and a Furby, the electronic toy that became globally popular in the late 1990s. In the foreground, three Mexican piñatas float: a T-Rex, a horse, and the classic ball shape with seven conical points. These colorful, crepe-paper-decorated, candy-filled papier-mâché figures are traditionally hung at children’s birthday parties, where blindfolded children take turns trying to smash them within a set time. When the time is up, the next child takes a turn. But there is only ever one piñata per party. In contrast, Valerian’s three piñatas suggest different temporal layers or possibilities that can coexist simultaneously in painting.
Within the layers of Valerian’s paintings lie fragments, quotations, and gestures from across the entire history of painting—from Mannerism to the present day—but especially from the new figuration of the 1980s and ’90s, with influences from German Neo-Expressionism and artists like Marlene Dumas or Norbert Schwontkowski. At the same time, some varnished passages in the dinosaur paintings evoke the feel of 19th-century painting— idealized works by artists from the Düsseldorf Academy like Albert Bierstadt, who painted the grand panoramas of the then still-largely-unknown American West. Valerian’s painting appears absurdly timeless. It possesses an outsider-like, almost spiritual simplicity that—even when he allows baroque skies or putti to dissolve, and incorporates seemingly “kitsch” or “folk” motifs—never becomes ironic or cynical. It’s never “painting about painting” that pretends to know more than you.
Constant collapse and constant new beginning—this applies to Valerian’s painting process as well. His work isn’t primarily narrative but subordinate to (often semi-abstract) composition. When Valerian casts canaries, pansies, piñatas, or confetti into his indefinite, gestural color spaces, it’s primarily a painterly decision. His childlike- mythological figures recall the works of California painter Laura Owens from the late 1990s and early 2000s, who used animals and mythical creatures as placeholders or “companions” to draw viewers into formal compositions. For Valerian, it’s an ambivalent, adventurous experience that upends expectations and prejudices and demands radical existential openness—even if the process is as predictable and uncertain as life itself.
