Michael Bauer
01 Nov - 20 Dec 2014
MICHAEL BAUER
Dead Design (He Paints, She Paints)
1 November - 20 December 2014
Galerie Peter Kilchmann is pleased to present the artist Michael Bauer in a solo exhibition for the third time. Entitled “Dead Design (He paints, She paints)” Bauer is showing new large-format paintings (all 2014, oil on canvas, approx. 228 x 246 cm) as well as a selection of new black-and-white works on paper (all 2014, silkscreen on paper, approx. 40 x 60 cm).
With an explicit formal vocabulary Michael Bauer shows beer barrels, cheese, sandwiches, spectacles, moustaches and all sorts of other well-known objects from everyday life. Body fragments such as crawling fingers, open mouths and sexual organs also appear. Bauerʼs visual worlds grant the viewer access to a network of allusions and associations. This may appear diffuse - but it turns out to be a fascinating foray through alien, unfathomable trains of thought. Personal inspirations, memories of the past, friendsʼ complicated anecdotes, the extravagant resonance of long-extinct soundtracks – Bauer combines in one picture a multitude of ideas and concepts, forms and styles – even cultures and traditions. Looking at Bauerʼs pictures at once leads us to make them our own. The strange wickerwork interlaces with our own and before noticing one is already in the midst of this intricate, denselypopulated composition – derailed and perhaps precisely for this reason on new journeys. Despite the complex composition planned structures can be discerned. Bauerʼs paintings are organisms with numerous cross beams. Meanwhile, various colour screens coexist in the background. Geometric and abstract forms and cloudy, coloured hazes meet concrete, stylised objects whose form of representation is reminiscent of cartoons. The centre is in a state shortly before a massive overload of synchronisms. The factors of time, space and movement are inexorably accelerated in the interplay of order and chaos. Colours, forms, surfaces and lines manifest and accumulate in a seductive dynamism which appears powerful but simultaneously extraordinarily light.
Michael Bauer was born in 1973 in Erkelenz, Germany. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig and now lives in New York. Among his most important museum exhibitions are those at Villa Merkel in Esslingen am Neckar (2011), which was accompanied by the monograph “K-Hole (Frogs)” published by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, at Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2009), the Städtische Galerie, Delmenhorst (2007); and at the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2007). The monograph “Borwasser” (2008), published by JRP Ringier Presse, contains texts by Jennifer Higgie and Stefanie Popp. In spring 2015 a new monograph will be published with texts by Dan Fox and Carter.
Dead Design (He Paints, She Paints)
1 November - 20 December 2014
Galerie Peter Kilchmann is pleased to present the artist Michael Bauer in a solo exhibition for the third time. Entitled “Dead Design (He paints, She paints)” Bauer is showing new large-format paintings (all 2014, oil on canvas, approx. 228 x 246 cm) as well as a selection of new black-and-white works on paper (all 2014, silkscreen on paper, approx. 40 x 60 cm).
With an explicit formal vocabulary Michael Bauer shows beer barrels, cheese, sandwiches, spectacles, moustaches and all sorts of other well-known objects from everyday life. Body fragments such as crawling fingers, open mouths and sexual organs also appear. Bauerʼs visual worlds grant the viewer access to a network of allusions and associations. This may appear diffuse - but it turns out to be a fascinating foray through alien, unfathomable trains of thought. Personal inspirations, memories of the past, friendsʼ complicated anecdotes, the extravagant resonance of long-extinct soundtracks – Bauer combines in one picture a multitude of ideas and concepts, forms and styles – even cultures and traditions. Looking at Bauerʼs pictures at once leads us to make them our own. The strange wickerwork interlaces with our own and before noticing one is already in the midst of this intricate, denselypopulated composition – derailed and perhaps precisely for this reason on new journeys. Despite the complex composition planned structures can be discerned. Bauerʼs paintings are organisms with numerous cross beams. Meanwhile, various colour screens coexist in the background. Geometric and abstract forms and cloudy, coloured hazes meet concrete, stylised objects whose form of representation is reminiscent of cartoons. The centre is in a state shortly before a massive overload of synchronisms. The factors of time, space and movement are inexorably accelerated in the interplay of order and chaos. Colours, forms, surfaces and lines manifest and accumulate in a seductive dynamism which appears powerful but simultaneously extraordinarily light.
Michael Bauer was born in 1973 in Erkelenz, Germany. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig and now lives in New York. Among his most important museum exhibitions are those at Villa Merkel in Esslingen am Neckar (2011), which was accompanied by the monograph “K-Hole (Frogs)” published by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, at Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2009), the Städtische Galerie, Delmenhorst (2007); and at the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2007). The monograph “Borwasser” (2008), published by JRP Ringier Presse, contains texts by Jennifer Higgie and Stefanie Popp. In spring 2015 a new monograph will be published with texts by Dan Fox and Carter.