Marc Wellmann

Using humour, sensitivity, and precise interventions, the American artist Brad Downey investigates the underlying structure of our cities, our landscapes, our sacred sites, as well as the forgotten peripheries and contested borders. In the process he weaves entirely new narratives with their chaotic patterns, obscuring the separation between art and everyday life. Slapstick Formalism presents a synopsis of his overall multifaceted oeuvre: sculptures, architecture, performances, installations, films, drawings, collages, and activism, each of which is inspired by the objects and activities of daily life.

Contemporary Visual Communication in a Historic Weaving Technique Margret Eicher's (b. Viersen, Germany, 1955; lives and works in Berlin) large-format tapestries combine the baroque form of the woven picture with familiar motifs excerpted from contemporary media images. She digitizes her sources and then assembles them in painstaking editing work on the computer. The resulting 'media tapestries' occupy the interface between the traditional work of art as a physical object and the electronic noise of the digital realm: two worlds that at first glance would seem to be incompatible yet find themselves in harmonious union in Eicher's art. In G ttliche Liebe (Divine Love), for example, Caravaggio's Crowning with Thorns meets a kissing gay couple from a pro-tolerance campaign in Berlin, while Botticelli's Birth of Venus is sampled together with a subway station in Frankfurt. In conceptual art production, the creative idea is central and its realization becomes secondary; in a final twist, Lob der Malkunst (Praise of Painting) elects this practice as its artistic lodestar.

While Europe and the world are entangled in their own contradictions in celebrating economic growth and technical progress as the salvation horizon of humanity, Filip Markiewicz proposes to dive into a universe of signs and images that reflect the emptiness of our current discourses. He imagines his exhibitions as stages on which individuals are invited to watch the decline of their own civilisation. The myth of the automobile ends in desolate cemeteries of rusted engines and useless tires; giant bank notes stand for the deceptive show of perverted politics and media (self-)representation. As the artist stated in his theatre performance Fake Fiction (Theater Basel, 2017): “Today, we have all somehow turned into Bela Lugosi. The dance of the vampires of the European image can begin. It’s time to put on the masks and drink the digital blood until our hard drive is formatted for eternity.”

Wie sah das Sehen oder das Denken uber das Sehen in der Vergangenheit hinsichtlich der inneren Widerstande des menschlichen Blicks aus und auf welche Weise hatte dieses Wissen Einfluss auf die Herstellung von Bildern bzw. auf die Theorie der Malerei? Die Untersuchung befasst sich anhand verschiedener historischer Momente mit der Beziehung der Malerei zu optischen Phanomenen, die den Blick truben, verschleiern oder unscharf werden lassen. Auf welche Weise waren derartige Erscheinungen den Kunstlern zwischen dem 15. und dem 19. Jahrhundert prasent? Wie wurde ihnen auf dem Boden des herrschenden Bildbegriffs begegnet? Welche Funktion hatten sie im Rahmen von Kunsttheorie und -praxis? Wie wurden sie nutzbar gemacht oder ausgegrenzt und wie wurden sie dargestellt bzw. ubersetzt? Diese Fragen fuhren prinzipiell auf das Verhaltnis von Malerei und Optik bzw. auf die Diskurse, mit denen Malerei auf Optisches zuruckgefuhrt und begrundet wurde.