What doesn’t fit

Does painting today manifest itself as a picture surface? Is its new meaning to be just one picture surface in the midst of other picture surfaces? If the question is answered with "no", then there is an unbridgeable gap between picture surface and colour surface. Not being transparent but nevertheless pretending to be so the colour surface evokes ambiguity and contradictoriness: the ambiguity of a second and a third dimension, the contradictoriness of representation and the use of colour creating distance to this representation. There is no exact answer as to where figuration starts and abstraction ends. Owing to its ambiguity and contradictoriness people have frequently wanted to get rid of painting. It was claimed to be an illusion, a lie and a phantasmorgia, even a dangerous poison and a pharmacon - as Plato described it a long time ago in Book 10 of the Politeia. The objections to painting are refutable though, if it is merely conceded that as a medium in the traditional sense painting is outdated. For its opponents the biggest shortcomings of painting are the material or medial restriction and the limitation to the use of the surface. These arguments of criticism receive especially quick attention because our time is marked by communication and information transfer. That this thought does not necessarily contradict painting though is made clear by the works of Sven Drühl, Markus Huemer and Stefan Sehler. They are not to be understood as painting in the classical sense - hence the chosen title 'What doesn't fit...' for the show. Each of the three artists works on painting in his own specific way without sticking to the formal historical pre-set standards of the medium.

Painting remains superior in the illusion of colour. The colour surface is no metaphor, but the window, the mirror or the screen is. Metaphors are always in relation to painting. But the colour surface is given right from the beginning with painting. Painting does not belong to the realm of metaphor but to the domain of metamorphosis. It can be filed in the comprehensive history of the picture surface and its capability of representation. In this case the beginning of representation is marked by the depiction of the painting as an open window through which one looks at a substitute world. A pictorial means of composition from Renaissance times that has become a recurrent metaphor because it also applies to photography, film or television. Its latest forms can be found in the computer context. It is no accident that the term windows is used for the movable windows on the screen. In this respect numerous positions in contemporary art represent extensions of the traditional medial border of painting by integrating technical achievements. There obviously is a consistent intermedia orientation in contemporary painting; it can't do without approaches going beyond the borders of art forms any more. Sculptural and photographic elements are integrated as well as the techniques of media art. Drühl, Huemer and Sehler show that at the same time numerous expanded variations of the handed-down categories colour, structure, materiality and surface have taken shape too.

Drühl's artistic approach can be located in the area of conceptual painting, re-interpreting paintings from art history and contemporary art (from Caspar David Friedrich by way of Ferdinand Hodler to Eberhard Havekost) in the sense of a remix or transformation. The works stand in the tradition of serial art and Appropriation Art focussing on experimental painterly alteration. In continuation of the concept large size diptychs, triptychs and works on paper as well as neon light works are created. The diptychs and triptychs in particular present a further development of the remix theme. They are composed of fragments of paintings. They are quotations of the second order - copies of copies - and at the same time novel landscape collages: mountains from Bürger, trees from Schischkin, rocks from Friedrich, flowers from Hodler - all merged in one work.

In his artistic examination, he calls it "medial mannerism", Huemer investigates both the experiences of the "old" medium painting and the art suitability of the so-called New Media. This is done by using technical equipment and with reference to historical examples in painting such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Yves Klein or Sigmar Polke. The highlight so far can be seen in his paraphrases of Sibylla Maria Merian's plant and insect pictures from the 17th century. They show abstract signs in the medial primary colours blue, black and white. Irritating titles localize them as forms from the digital world and the internet. In their mannered form the borders of art and information, picture and illustration, medium and message dissolve, something with which already the beginning art history had its problems, from facing Merian's nature drawings to recent times, and which goes on in the problematic attempts at defining the artistic in the New Media. Huemer puts the question about the definition of the picture: what constitutes a picture in the age of electronic media?

Though being based on representational picture elements Sehler's painting has an abstract character. The motifs are worked on with a monochrome framing and a dripping-like verre églomisé method - creating a kind of photography-mimicry which reveals only at close examination that it is painting after all. Their colour treatment, the reduction to basic forms and the principle of repetition make things seem to be removed from their original pictorial contents and submitted to a higher pattern of order. This does not scrutinize the borders of the medium or the representability of specific themes but mainly examines aspects of colour and form by playfully appropriating the motifs. Sehler develops his themes in a series of paintings. Thus similar motifs - mostly mountains and flower still lives - appear in different compositions. The artist mirrors the motifs without supplying an explanation for this within the picture.

The exhibition 'What doesn't fit...' does not bind Drühl, Huemer and Sehler to a thematic superstructure. In an exemplary way they show the diverse intermedia possibilities of examining the medium painting. At the same time three very different variants of strategies for finding pictures are presented. Drühl is occupied with the discourse of painting as well as with Appropriation Art and focuses mainly on the area of landscape painting. Taking into account the digital media Huemer examines the creation of myths in art by ironically commenting on the supposedly spiritual level of the art historical models. Sehler makes use of an unusual technique for his almost classical motifs: verre églomisé. As a result his works oscillate between representation of reality and abstraction. The works of Sven Drühl, Markus Huemer and Stefan Sehler denote the wide range of contemporary painting. Analogy conclusions may surely arise - but then only in direct contemplation.

Pressetext

What doesn’t fit
kuratiert von Oliver Zybok

mit Sven Drühl, Markus Huemer, Stefan Sehler