Michael Bauer
02 Nov - 21 Dec 2007
MICHAEL BAUER
"French Meat, Belgian Meat"
Invited guest by Michael Bauer:
Robert Kraiss
Ich, Zeichengeilo
Opening: Friday, November 2nd, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition: November 3rd – December 21st 2007
Painter Michael Bauer (born in 1973, Erelenz) lives and works in Cologne. His paintings are a brown and brutal cacophony, enriched with figurative and ornamental elements. A busted accumulation within the centre of the painting, combined with outgrows that loom into the periphery of the canvas. A fragmentary sound portrait that is bordered by pat-terned bands and frames or a machinery of inventions that creates hybrid beings, which are knotted with attributes such as cigarettes or coins. What do you associate with this?
Michael Bauer invents figures with the help of various painting techniques. He com-bines organic and geometric forms with eyes and cigarette stubs, figurative and ornamen-tal elements with noses and material patterns, paste-like patches and glazed-painted bits with bent bars and dangling balls, unpainted and hermetical colour surfaces with human’s hybrids and machines. He often aligns his motifs at the centre axis and herewith creates objects with symmetrical harmony. The variety of painting techniques he uses within one and the same painting demonstrate the original way in which Bauer handles the subject of sexuality/corporeal as well as the artist’s interest in painting as a medium. Behind the background of the age-long tradition of portrait painting and the invention of photography, we nowadays classify the portrait as a genre between subjective invention (inventio), artifi-ciality construction and the explicit interpretation of the human being. Bauer makes an is-sue of the artificiality of a portrait in his large-sized painting Jona Lewie – 20 Million Years as well as in the painting F/M Torben (both 2007): His paintings are the result of an imagi-nary brain-shag. They don’t aim at physiognomic similarity or at the characterisation of a certain person. With his serial method of production, the artist rather shows his interest in varying the representation itself. A closer look at Michael Bauer’s series of works reminds of an ancestral portrait gallery and the observer might suddenly discover similarities be-tween the paintings on a formal level. Bauer’s portraits can be considered as an attempt to map the imaginative, since it is basically impossible to represent the entireness of a per-sonality with all its facets. After all, the term 'portrait' comes from 'protrahere' (extract) or in other words: It is all about the attempt to visualise the invisible. In doing so, the partially fictive titles serve as references, yet they do not provide additional explanations, but they form part of the representation itself, though on the phonetical level.
For the first time Michael Bauer exhibits objects: Pale plaster is being combined with ele-ments of constructivist art. A landscape of misshapen figures reminds of liquefied aerosol whipped cream that stiffens after some time. An object consisting of three balls that is ar-ranged vertically is completely covered in black tesseras. A ball pen cast in synthetic resin, which gives away the name of the artist’s tax consultant, is glued to the first of the three balls. Here, a stage-like element or a white socket form an integral part of the sculptures and do not merely serve as presentation supports.
Artist Robert Kraiss (born in 1972 in Bonn) lives and works in Cologne. He is a drawer who is not only interested in concrete objects (within the picture), but also in abstract ele-ments. He arranges those by means of omission, gaps and overdrawing within the image space. The artist draws with pencil, mostly without specific models and regardless of his-toric dimensions. Collage techniques are of fundamental significance within his works and they also influence the combination of the motifs. In his large-sized drawing o.T. (2007), Kraiss juggles with different kinds of strokes and hatchings. He covers and uncovers figu-rative elements with abstract areas and erasures. His large-sized drawing o.T. (2007) forms a counterpoint, as it was entirely filled with graphite. Here, the conduction of the pencil drawings strokes results in a shiny silver surface. A closer look reveals that the work is separated into equally sized square segments: Kraiss dispersed these segments among his friends and asked them to blacken the square that had been assigned to them. This way the various participants create a piece of art, which finally forms a whole. In addition to the large-sized drawings, we may also observe smaller sheets that give examples of his dealing with objects in a humorous and ironic way. One of the drawings shows a Roman cutting off an old woman’s head.
Robert Kraiss’ main subject however is the medium of the drawing itself: This be-comes obvious in the fact that he crosses the material borders by using different drawing techniques. He erases, strikes through, blackens and uses uncontrolled refined move-ments. Other areas are drawn neatly and in detail with rhythmic changes and hatches so frantic they damage the paper. Furthermore, he deals with drawing as a process and in-tents to abstract personal gestures.
Michael Bauer studied at Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Braunschweig (Braunschweig University of Fine Arts) with the lecturers Hartmut Neumann and Walter Dahn. Since then he has lived and worked in Cologne. From 2002 until 2004 he has managed the exhibition room Brotherslascher together with Tim Berresheim. Exhibitions (selection): 2007: The Pack, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, Expanded Painting, Prague Biennale, Die Kunst zu sammeln (The Art of Collecting), Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; 2006: The Winnipeg Whore, Hotel, London, Die anderen Bilder – Outsider und Verwandtes aus der Sammlung Hartmut Neumann (The other pictures – Outsiders and congeners from the Hartmut Neu-mann Collection), Museum der Stadt Ratingen, Faster! Bigger! Better!, ZKM, (Center for Art and Art) Karlsruhe; 2005: figure – five positions, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich.
Robert Kraiss studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Arts Academy of the city of Dus-seldorf) and has finished his studies as a master scholar of Georg Herold. Since 2004 he has been organising exhibitions with Anja Kepme and Tina Tonagel in the exhibition room maxim in Cologne. Exhibitions (selection): 2007: Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Robert Kraiss, West LB, Düsseldorf; 2006: the truth tut gut (truth feels good), Montgomery, Berlin; 2005: Compilation II, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; 2004: Bon direct, Kunstverein Bonn; 2003: Konzert mit die Bäume, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein.
"French Meat, Belgian Meat"
Invited guest by Michael Bauer:
Robert Kraiss
Ich, Zeichengeilo
Opening: Friday, November 2nd, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition: November 3rd – December 21st 2007
Painter Michael Bauer (born in 1973, Erelenz) lives and works in Cologne. His paintings are a brown and brutal cacophony, enriched with figurative and ornamental elements. A busted accumulation within the centre of the painting, combined with outgrows that loom into the periphery of the canvas. A fragmentary sound portrait that is bordered by pat-terned bands and frames or a machinery of inventions that creates hybrid beings, which are knotted with attributes such as cigarettes or coins. What do you associate with this?
Michael Bauer invents figures with the help of various painting techniques. He com-bines organic and geometric forms with eyes and cigarette stubs, figurative and ornamen-tal elements with noses and material patterns, paste-like patches and glazed-painted bits with bent bars and dangling balls, unpainted and hermetical colour surfaces with human’s hybrids and machines. He often aligns his motifs at the centre axis and herewith creates objects with symmetrical harmony. The variety of painting techniques he uses within one and the same painting demonstrate the original way in which Bauer handles the subject of sexuality/corporeal as well as the artist’s interest in painting as a medium. Behind the background of the age-long tradition of portrait painting and the invention of photography, we nowadays classify the portrait as a genre between subjective invention (inventio), artifi-ciality construction and the explicit interpretation of the human being. Bauer makes an is-sue of the artificiality of a portrait in his large-sized painting Jona Lewie – 20 Million Years as well as in the painting F/M Torben (both 2007): His paintings are the result of an imagi-nary brain-shag. They don’t aim at physiognomic similarity or at the characterisation of a certain person. With his serial method of production, the artist rather shows his interest in varying the representation itself. A closer look at Michael Bauer’s series of works reminds of an ancestral portrait gallery and the observer might suddenly discover similarities be-tween the paintings on a formal level. Bauer’s portraits can be considered as an attempt to map the imaginative, since it is basically impossible to represent the entireness of a per-sonality with all its facets. After all, the term 'portrait' comes from 'protrahere' (extract) or in other words: It is all about the attempt to visualise the invisible. In doing so, the partially fictive titles serve as references, yet they do not provide additional explanations, but they form part of the representation itself, though on the phonetical level.
For the first time Michael Bauer exhibits objects: Pale plaster is being combined with ele-ments of constructivist art. A landscape of misshapen figures reminds of liquefied aerosol whipped cream that stiffens after some time. An object consisting of three balls that is ar-ranged vertically is completely covered in black tesseras. A ball pen cast in synthetic resin, which gives away the name of the artist’s tax consultant, is glued to the first of the three balls. Here, a stage-like element or a white socket form an integral part of the sculptures and do not merely serve as presentation supports.
Artist Robert Kraiss (born in 1972 in Bonn) lives and works in Cologne. He is a drawer who is not only interested in concrete objects (within the picture), but also in abstract ele-ments. He arranges those by means of omission, gaps and overdrawing within the image space. The artist draws with pencil, mostly without specific models and regardless of his-toric dimensions. Collage techniques are of fundamental significance within his works and they also influence the combination of the motifs. In his large-sized drawing o.T. (2007), Kraiss juggles with different kinds of strokes and hatchings. He covers and uncovers figu-rative elements with abstract areas and erasures. His large-sized drawing o.T. (2007) forms a counterpoint, as it was entirely filled with graphite. Here, the conduction of the pencil drawings strokes results in a shiny silver surface. A closer look reveals that the work is separated into equally sized square segments: Kraiss dispersed these segments among his friends and asked them to blacken the square that had been assigned to them. This way the various participants create a piece of art, which finally forms a whole. In addition to the large-sized drawings, we may also observe smaller sheets that give examples of his dealing with objects in a humorous and ironic way. One of the drawings shows a Roman cutting off an old woman’s head.
Robert Kraiss’ main subject however is the medium of the drawing itself: This be-comes obvious in the fact that he crosses the material borders by using different drawing techniques. He erases, strikes through, blackens and uses uncontrolled refined move-ments. Other areas are drawn neatly and in detail with rhythmic changes and hatches so frantic they damage the paper. Furthermore, he deals with drawing as a process and in-tents to abstract personal gestures.
Michael Bauer studied at Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Braunschweig (Braunschweig University of Fine Arts) with the lecturers Hartmut Neumann and Walter Dahn. Since then he has lived and worked in Cologne. From 2002 until 2004 he has managed the exhibition room Brotherslascher together with Tim Berresheim. Exhibitions (selection): 2007: The Pack, Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, Expanded Painting, Prague Biennale, Die Kunst zu sammeln (The Art of Collecting), Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; 2006: The Winnipeg Whore, Hotel, London, Die anderen Bilder – Outsider und Verwandtes aus der Sammlung Hartmut Neumann (The other pictures – Outsiders and congeners from the Hartmut Neu-mann Collection), Museum der Stadt Ratingen, Faster! Bigger! Better!, ZKM, (Center for Art and Art) Karlsruhe; 2005: figure – five positions, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich.
Robert Kraiss studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Arts Academy of the city of Dus-seldorf) and has finished his studies as a master scholar of Georg Herold. Since 2004 he has been organising exhibitions with Anja Kepme and Tina Tonagel in the exhibition room maxim in Cologne. Exhibitions (selection): 2007: Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Robert Kraiss, West LB, Düsseldorf; 2006: the truth tut gut (truth feels good), Montgomery, Berlin; 2005: Compilation II, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; 2004: Bon direct, Kunstverein Bonn; 2003: Konzert mit die Bäume, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein.