Klasse Malerei

Mixed-Media auf Leinwand

Technik:

Malerei

Versand:

Die Arbeit wird aufgespannt auf einem Keilrahmen versendet – inklusive Echtheitszertifikat und Signatur auf der Rückseite.

Concept:

This painting continues a series of works examining the medium’s relevance in contemporary art: Schnee von Gestern, -20 €⁰, Breadpainting and Rawdogging a Painting. Like them, it addresses questions of authorship, agency, free will, originality, and work.

The upper section of the artwork is an original landscape, typical of its genre and picturesque origin – a desublimation of the urban longing for land. To own a landscape painting is to vicariously own land, but free from obligations that come with the possession of an actual property. The scene appears abandoned, a type of ruin: run-down barns, plot overgrown with wildflowers and hay. It shows the effects of environmental agency. The scene presents a mystery, aligning with W. J. T. Mitchell’s interpretation of a picturesque landscape as a found object.

A found object itself, to qualify as such, must be ordinary and must be found accidentally, without seeking. The painting as a contemporary art medium can be relevant only by being a found object.

The landscape also embodies what I call the workers’ sublime – the awe at the amount of sheer labor embedded in the work: the detail, the craft, the time. This effect is amplified by the zero-sum shock of witnessing its “spoilage” through paint smudges. The landscape in this case is a double ruin.

The lower section is a found object proper – a painter’s fleece used in a studio to protect floors and tables from paint and primer. Discarded as a byproduct of the art-making process, it nevertheless possesses, in my view, aesthetic qualities that surpass those of intentional artworks. This reframes art-making through Jon Elster’s notion of states that are essentially by-products – something that only occurs as a result of actions taken for other purposes, and cannot be intentionally created because attempting to do so prevents the state from being achieved.

To have both processes present in a single work, I left the landscape in a studio where painting workshops regularly take place. I wanted the people using the space to treat the canvas as protective covering. After nearly a year, however, there was little progress. People were self-conscious. The smudges and marks were sparse and unconvincing. The opposite happened – the landscape, being recognized as art, lost its capacity to become a by-product.

To make it evident I stitched the canvas together with a real painter’s fleece, exposing the clash between the agency of an autonomous artist and the agency of a subjugated environment. The resulting simultaneous contrast invites a duck‑rabbit paradigm shift in perception, challenging assumptions about work, artwork, freedom and originality.