Heimo Zobernig
11 Mar - 18 Apr 2015
HEIMO ZOBERNIG
11 March - 18 April 2015
Placing Heimo Zobernig into a specific artistic category has always been essentially impossible. He has explored them all, undermining them at the same time: Zobernig has turned categories on their heads, postulated and simultaneously questioned them. He has negated boundaries, disregarded hierarchies. He has not even left his own status as an artist untouched, titling his catalog (mumok 2003) "Austelung Katerlog". He has consistently executed his work with a decisive seriousness, while reflexively undercutting it with subtle humor – an aspect that has not always been understood. And even this seems to be part of his considerations.
Zobernig's strategy is discourse, the subject of which often is his own work, with the added ambiguity that the exhibition is always also the work.
In this context, the exclusive focus on pure painting is only seemingly surprising. Zobernig once more thwarts conventional codifications of his artistic position by means of antithetical demonstration.
The decidedly painterly group of work outlines a basic problem. Monochromes, geometric abstraction, and the concrete variant of panel painting have been exhaustively worked over in Zobernig's oeuvre, the visual characteristics of text, the theme of repetition and non-repeatability have been explored and worn down. Now the focus is on gestural expression. Has Zobernig been overcome by romanticism?
Bizarre trowel marks in shrill neon colors draw the eye. There is a palpable reference to the grids of his early years, though massively infiltrated by the gestural. The images reveal a playful relationship to the history of painting, as well as to the supposedly polar elements of figuration and abstraction. Their appearance is ambivalent – not purely abstract, yet not representational, it suggests both while defying categorization. Figure and background are dispensed with as compositional principles: The painterly process as a complex narrative that determines the image.
Taped-off grid lines provide a basic framework, the structure of which is ruptured by the gestural application of color. Layers of paint, clear and curvy lines and loops are closely interwoven. The successive removal of tape reveals deeper lying layers. Different temporal stages of the development process are made simultaneously visible. The compaction of the separate constituent pictorial elements and painterly dispositions result in highly subjective configurations. For all their suggested spontaneity, these create a very controlled appearance and in their visibly painted aspect determine the eccentric form.
The materiality of the painting and its pictorial organization is rendered tangible, the artificiality of the status "painting" is emphasized in the affirmative. Zobernig's current paintings are an aesthetic statement. A new complexity manifests itself, full of fractures and discontinuities. The organizing principle is anarchy, each positing is heterogeneous and at the same time new. And yet Zobernig remains unwavering loyal to his original intentions.
The paintings currently on view at Galerie Meyer Kainer were exhibited from 20 November 2014 to 15 February 2015 at the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover. The accompanying exhibition catalog features a remarkable and illuminating text by Henri Dietz.
Margareta Sandhofer
11 March - 18 April 2015
Placing Heimo Zobernig into a specific artistic category has always been essentially impossible. He has explored them all, undermining them at the same time: Zobernig has turned categories on their heads, postulated and simultaneously questioned them. He has negated boundaries, disregarded hierarchies. He has not even left his own status as an artist untouched, titling his catalog (mumok 2003) "Austelung Katerlog". He has consistently executed his work with a decisive seriousness, while reflexively undercutting it with subtle humor – an aspect that has not always been understood. And even this seems to be part of his considerations.
Zobernig's strategy is discourse, the subject of which often is his own work, with the added ambiguity that the exhibition is always also the work.
In this context, the exclusive focus on pure painting is only seemingly surprising. Zobernig once more thwarts conventional codifications of his artistic position by means of antithetical demonstration.
The decidedly painterly group of work outlines a basic problem. Monochromes, geometric abstraction, and the concrete variant of panel painting have been exhaustively worked over in Zobernig's oeuvre, the visual characteristics of text, the theme of repetition and non-repeatability have been explored and worn down. Now the focus is on gestural expression. Has Zobernig been overcome by romanticism?
Bizarre trowel marks in shrill neon colors draw the eye. There is a palpable reference to the grids of his early years, though massively infiltrated by the gestural. The images reveal a playful relationship to the history of painting, as well as to the supposedly polar elements of figuration and abstraction. Their appearance is ambivalent – not purely abstract, yet not representational, it suggests both while defying categorization. Figure and background are dispensed with as compositional principles: The painterly process as a complex narrative that determines the image.
Taped-off grid lines provide a basic framework, the structure of which is ruptured by the gestural application of color. Layers of paint, clear and curvy lines and loops are closely interwoven. The successive removal of tape reveals deeper lying layers. Different temporal stages of the development process are made simultaneously visible. The compaction of the separate constituent pictorial elements and painterly dispositions result in highly subjective configurations. For all their suggested spontaneity, these create a very controlled appearance and in their visibly painted aspect determine the eccentric form.
The materiality of the painting and its pictorial organization is rendered tangible, the artificiality of the status "painting" is emphasized in the affirmative. Zobernig's current paintings are an aesthetic statement. A new complexity manifests itself, full of fractures and discontinuities. The organizing principle is anarchy, each positing is heterogeneous and at the same time new. And yet Zobernig remains unwavering loyal to his original intentions.
The paintings currently on view at Galerie Meyer Kainer were exhibited from 20 November 2014 to 15 February 2015 at the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover. The accompanying exhibition catalog features a remarkable and illuminating text by Henri Dietz.
Margareta Sandhofer