Scope

The exhibition shows new works by Tomek Baran and Patrick Schmierer. In their artistic development they both scan the field of abstract painting and redefine the boundaries of the image. Baran often works with ordinary, so to say traditional media, in terms of the format (square, circle), and the technique (oil on canvas, oil on panel), as well as operations. As a counterpart to this, it includes all that what is on and in the scene.

The uniformity and restraint of the image proves to be illusory in Barans case. The visitor notices for example a glint, or the paint layer is applied as if the painting inhales or exhales. Or when the mutable brushwriting demands movement from the viewer. In this case the experience of objects is not like Jean-François Lyotard put it, fulfilled by one single sense of seeing. Instead it is the body which is addressed.

The body – image relationship is discussed at different levels in his works, although the eye is going to be seduced first. The viewer is invited to imagine himself in the whole act of the becoming of the work. Crumpling, folding, glueing, sprinkle with color – all these processes, sometimes lined with violence, lead Baran to his works that act as accomplices. The viewer is in the picture, Wolfgang Kemp said several years ago. Referring to the works of Baran you can even take this statement literally – as in the case of the picture “Diptychon mit Spiegel”.

Patrick Schmierer continues his exploration of color, materiality, and the critical analysis of the image – object status consequently. In a recent series of small works he is not using boards of wood (MDF) anymore, but canvas. The basis of classical panel painting, the rectangular, however, is out of whack: crooked edges frame straight lines of color. The cold texture of the paint is contrasted with the grey-brown quality of the canvas. An experimental approach to the logic of the material also features the so-called “asteroids” – a series of works in which strikes seem to have left their traces. Silver vanish affects the small, deep works of lightweight balsa wood like heavy metal.

In a variation of the works Schmierer has also packed them in foil: coated with smooth front, opened inside the silver “strikes” and protruding corners, open the image towards the room. Schmierer is applying himself to inherent issues of painting, whereat the image through its enhanced spatial reference is always flirting with the object status.

Patrick Schmierer continues his exploration of color, materiality, and the critical analysis of the image – object status consequently. His series with colorline-progressions moved from wood on canvas which smartly accentuates the contrast between the material quality of the canvas and the cold texture of the paint. Unobtrusively condescending the lines seem to revitalize the canvas which got long in the tooth.

Incidentally they also help the pale complexion of the background. Schmierer healthfully slapped the basis of classical panel painting, the nice and correct rectangular, to avoid tensions coming from the 90° stiffness. The asteroids series developped as well: The balsa wood surface is covered with foil which expands into the space at the corners. Furhter the smooth top is strickened by a varnish which eats itself deeply to the innermost of the picture. What comes upon there? With humorous remarks and a touch of sarcasm Schmierer deals with intrinsic questions of painting whereas the picture with its enhanced spatial reference always coquets with the object.

Despite the experimental approach, especially in terms of material in the works of both artists, you find a lot of traditional mechanisms of painting such as light, color and gesture. Various techniques, materials, structures and processes expand the space of the picture to the viewer’s space and scrape the parameters of classical painting from different perspectives. As Sven Drühl stated correctly, the novelty of the New Abstraction is their substantive freedom and independence: a scope which is far from beeing exhausted.