With Siegfried Anzinger, John M Armleder, Erwin Bohatsch, Herbert Brandl, Thomas
Feuerstein, Günther Förg, Leiko Ikemura, Florin Kompatscher, Hermann Nitsch, Walter
Obholzer, Norbert Schwontkowski, Erik Steinbrecher, Tal R and Otto Zitko
The success story of painting is owing mainly to the mobile picture panel that, while being a self-contained
entity, circulates in the most diverse contexts and arrangements. The mobile tableau turns the presentation
context into a picture puzzle. One and the same image moves easily from the neutral white of the art
gallery to the institutional setting of a traditional museum, from the Gesamtkunstwerk of the self-organised
art space to the domestic interior of a private environment, or being presented as an item of merchandise
in an art auction. Keeping this in mind, a critical painting practice at all times will also entail dealing with
strategies of setting and toying with modes of presentation.
One of the principal places for the circulation of pictures, however, especially also the painted ones, still is
the art gallery. The exhibition "A kind of salon" at the Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman Gallery, on the
occasion of this year's edition of curated by_ on the question of "Why painting now?", deals with "framework
conditions" and, in reference to an early form of presenting the mobile panel painting in the academic
salons (and implicitly the many countersalons), presents an artistically conceived accrochage. In the days of
the salons, well-known artists took on the role of a tapissier or décorateur and oversaw the hanging of
individual paintings in several horizontal rows, one above the other, against floral tapestries. Today,
painting preferably appears in company within an open field of reference. In his series of "Furniture
Sculptures" John M Armleder anticipates the "change of scenery" of mobile panel paintings by simply
providing set pieces of possible furnishings to go with his paintings. The question as to the relation
between a work of art and the world is very much inherent in all this, one that provides distance and the
freedom to leave conventions and systems behind: „You’re writing a narrative which is beyond you, that’s
why it’s interesting.“ (JMA- in Frieze d/e No. 10 June-August 2013, p. 77)
Standing at the helm of "A kind of salon," as it were, is Erik Steinbrecher, born in Switzerland and living
in Berlin. The artist's oeuvre is characterised by its humour and irony. He is best known for his rambling,
associative encyclopaedic assemblages of individual pictures of various origins, taken from the
inexhaustible image pool of everyday life. Steinbrecher positions, groups and shifts the images as in a
layout, arranges them into neat compositions, toying with the traditional genre of painting, from the
landscape to the interior, from the portrait to the multifarious variations of abstraction. The concept is
based on the idea of a traditional salon between "art and life," paintings hanging on the walls separately or
in neatly arranged groups, in the way of a collection, or in a playful manner corresponding with the objects
in the room. Around Armleder's sculpure "FS 230" (1989), positioned centrally in the main room, that
consists of three upholstered chairs on a pedestal painted in acrylic, Steinbrecher arranges a series of
abstract tableaux by various artists, each of them unique and at the same time part of a system which it
circulates in. The "layouts" do not follow historical patterns but rather unfold putative family
resemblances, and, when sculptural "flower islands" by John M Armleder appear in the immediate vicinity
of painting that reminds us perhaps of plant life, provoke a comparative perception of image and object.
The playing with references and allusions is continued in an assemblage of paintings and interiors, figures
and disappeared figures, as well as a figurine "enlivening" the room. The latter, entitled "ER" (2013), and
created by Steinbrecher himself, consists of a display dummy of a child, wearing a rubber mask and a
white sports outfit comprising a men's polo shirt, sport socks and sneakers. Besides the elements of a
stylised interior and a tamed nature by John M Armleder, Steinbrecher completes this fleeting
"picturesque" scenery (in the sense of relating to pictures) of mutual referencing with a model (or
phantom) of the human body. Who is ER? A guest? A visitor? ... A painter?
Marion Piffer Damiani, curator