Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman curated by Markus Mittringer
„vienna waits for you – take care!“

14.9 - 13.10.2018 Press release

Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Seilerstätte 7, 1010 Vienna
www.galeriethoman.com

Curator(s):

Markus Mittringer

Artist(s):

Hans Weigand
Markus Mittringer
Adolf Loos
Franz Koglmann
Wilhelm Gaube
Max Weiler
Herbert Brandl
Arnulf Rainer
Molto Brutto
Gerwald Rockenschaub
Rudi Molacek
Hans Weigand
Raymond Pettibon More

Raymond Pettibon (born in 1957, lives and works in Long Beach, California) has been one of the most significant contemporary representatives of a conceptual approach to the medium of drawing since the 1980s. Originally active in California’s post-punk and hardcore scene, Pettibon began by designing self-published booklets, concert flyers, and record covers for bands like Black Flag or Minutemen. Initially known to a subcultural public, Pettibon’s work has long since found its way into renowned institutions around the world, from L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In his drawings, usually done in ink, he develops a visual language that exhibits a wide range of influences from American popular culture. He thus combines quotations and borrowings from comic strips, film noir reminiscences, art historical references, and associative seeming textual passages to complex assemblages of image and text. Using graphite, watercolor, or chalk, Pettibon combines his works done on paper or on the wall to form labyrinthine installations. The adjacency and superimposition of the most various individual images and texts, distributed across an entire wall, generates complex images that can be read both as a whole as well as split up into their individual elements. With an often oddly laconic drasticness, these ensembles of associations, references, and narrative allusions explore the dark and traumatic aspects, failed promises, and latently threatening myths of American politics and (sub)culture.
Birgit Jürgenssen
Bruno Gironcoli
Hermann Leopoldi
Roland Rainer
Ossi Oberhuber
Franz Graf
Zenita Komad
Walter Pichler
Otto Zitko
Thomas Locher More

Thomas Locher (born 1956 in Mundekringen, lives and works in Berlin/Leipzig), a pioneering German artist for the realm of neo-conceptual art, achieved international renown for his spatial text works and installations. He has been consistently concerned for many years with foundations like the grammatical order of language and the complexity of its functioning in legal texts or economics, foundations that seem permanent, but nonetheless contain a portion of fictionality. His engagement with systems of meaning stretches also to their content, especially the political implications and the practical impacts on the life reality of individuals and groups. If we speak about Thomas Locher’s works, we are tempted to follow the conceptuality of the theories that lie at their foundation. But his works do not represent linguistic or sociological research, nor are they theories set into image. They stand as artworks, as aesthetic units of their own, their consistent design, sober on first glance, on second glance soaked in irony, allow us to follow his considerations without reference to theories. Thomas Locher has exhibited his work around the world: KMD Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, The Forestay Museum of Art, Cully Galerie, Galerie Silberkuppe, Berlin (2017), Secession Vienna (2013), ZKM Karlsruhe (2012), Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2012), MAK, Vienna (2012), Kunstpalais Erlangen (2012), Berlin Biennale, Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna (2010), ZKM, Karlsruhe (2009), Kunstverein Heilbronn (2007), Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006), Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna (2006, 2002, 1999), Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2004), Museum of Modern Art Saitama/Japan (1994), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1992) and Tate Gallery, Liverpool (1989).
Inge Morath
John M Armleder
Regine Hendrich