True Stories. A Show Related to an Era – The Eighties

Over a career spanning five decades, Günther Förg (1952–2013) developed a distinctive and prolific body of work, including experiments in abstraction and monochrome painting, against the general trend of figurative painting predominant in Germany in the 1980s. Wall paintings, sculptures, large format photographs, portraits and architectural views, as well as drawings and graphics, executed in a range of mediums, bear witness to the innovative diversity of the artist’s approach. Universal concepts of form, mass, proportion, rhythm and structure constitute a common thread in his work. From the late 2000s, Förg’s painting took a brighter and more gestural turn, resulting from an intuitive approach to colour and composition.  

‘Art, artists, architecture, landscapes, films and literature are all constant sources of inspiration for Günther Förg, and the notion that art is generally more likely to be derived from other art than from nature comes through in his various work cycles and series as well. His spontaneity of conception and dynamic gesture is contrasted with complex references and their associated meanings. Förg is concerned with self-reflecting experience and self-analysis in painting. By referring to the most diverse of artists from widely varying eras and styles of the 20th century, he brings out individual positions that were arguably of unparalleled relevance to artistic practice in subsequent decades, while at the same time he links periods and ideologies that were often mutually contradictory.’

B. Reiss, Günther Förg: Paintings, Walls, and Photographs in Günther Förg 1987–2011, exh. cat., Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2012

‘It is certainly easy to regard Martin Kippenberger as one of the greatest performers and self-promoters among German artists of the 1980s and 1990s, but that will do him justice only in part. Yet even the attempt to describe Kippenberger’s cosmos in all its complexity will necessarily fail. Like no other, he embodies the image of the “typical artist,” unlike anyone does he live an inseparable symbiosis of life and art production – in all its intensity and with all its ramifications. His work, based on permanent introspection, does not shy away from failure, disruption and great risks, and still provides impulses and inspiration today. 

All of his works are self-portraits in the broadest sense; they say something about him, his life situation, his environment – even those that do not actually depict him. His art is complex, varied, autobiographical and self-reflexive; it appropriates, quotes and deconstructs before it constructs something new that refers back to whatever came before. For Kippenberger, relinquishing his authorship, or handwriting, is already from an early age a logical consequence of his thinking and acting, since it indeed opens up a wide range of possibilities – above all the establishment of his own reference system – within the art production. The radicalism that characterizes this approach unfolds a spectrum of options and calls into question everything that has existed thus far – originality, authorship, value, and also “postmodern knowledge.” Kippenberger performs this critique intuitively and even ventures beyond it: the one great narrative is abandoned in favor of many options.’

S. Kleine, ‘Cosmos Kippenberger’, in Martin Kippenberger: BITTESCHÖN DANKESCHÖN, exh. cat., Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2019, p. 27

From the very beginning, Jeff Koons’ (b. 1955) popular, influential, celebrated and controversial oeuvre has questioned the traditional concept of art. His contextual sleight-of-hand, which transforms banal items into sumptuous icons, takes on a psychological dimension through dramatic shifts in scale, spectacularly engineered surfaces, and subliminal allegories of animals, humans, and anthropomorphised objects. While his approach is unconceivable without Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol as precursors, the subject of art history is a constant undercurrent in his work, whether Koons elevates kitsch to the level of classical art or produces works in the manner of Baroque sculptures.

‘As Arthur Danto once aptly said: “Everyone likes Koons’ art, Koons himself might say, unless they have been taught not to.” In this sense, Koons’ primary motivation is direct and clear communication with as many people as possible, which is why he focuses on universally understandable themes that he showcases artistically by means of contextual changes, dimensional shifts, and a high degree of perfection in the execution. [...] Koons, the imperturbable optimist, aims at the expression of happiness, self-assurance, and emotional abandon.’

A. Hüsch, A sensory overload on spin cycle: The sensual universe of Jeff Koons in Jeff Koons, Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2009

Since the 1980’s, Liz Larner (b. 1960) has been exploring and extending the conditions and possibilities of sculpture. Employing materials ranging from the sculptural to the mundane, including ceramics, bronze, gauze, rubber, chain, leather and bacterial cultures amongst others, Larner’s works are informed by the relationship between object, viewer and their surroundings, exploring the manifold qualities of each medium. In the late 1990’s, the artist started working with ceramics, experimenting with the firing and glazing process to create works harboured out of moments of unpredictability and chance. Recent works by Larner include wall-and floor-based pieces created out of single-use plastic components. By modifying their structure and use value, she reverses the process of decay and decomposition, transforming everyday waste materials into aesthetic form.

‘Liz Larner’s earliest sculptural objects resembled experiments that were on the edge of running out of control. Having begun by making photographs of unstable mixtures in Petri Dishes […] and recording their changes, Larner became more interested in the objects themselves rather than the photographs she was making of them. Gradually she became a sculptor rather than a photographer. She has always retained, however, an interest in the instability of form. […] There is part of almost everyone that prizes stability and predictability, but there is also something that revels in decay and decomposition, especially when it happens in a way that can be made visible – where the entropic meets the abject.’

R. Ferguson, ‘Liz Larner Ceramics: An Introduction’, Liz Larner, exh.cat., Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; New York, Karma, 2016, p. 5

Over a career spanning five decades, German sculptor Inge Mahn (1943–2023) consciously alienated the commonplace, sensibly manipulating everyday motifs to unlock a range of incongruous possibilities. Working predominantly with white plaster, the artist estranged objects through raw modelling, re-contextualisation, subtle subtractions and additions, creating a universe of unimagined possibilities.

Throughout Mahn’s practice, discrete sculptural elements and installations become activated by independent structures. Purposely ignoring the notion of the self-standing work of art, the artist created works that would interact with broader architectural, historical and socio-political contexts, often formulating responses to specific environments. Foregoing the ready-made principle and the traditional concept of architectural and monumental sculpture, the works testify to Mahn's career-long democratic intentions – often time-based or kinetic, they trigger one’s memories to comment on a range of issues such as authority, power and individuality.

‘Inge Mahn’s sculptures are not created in isolation, but evolve within their specific spatial and situational contexts. They are autonomous only in part, since they react to preexisting architectonic and social structures, assume a stance that corresponds to them, advance objections, stir up our ideas about objects, spaces and rules. This body of work is an ongoing violation of the rules, it provides the impetus for a process of rethinking, reinterpretation, rebuilding. Outwardly this is manifested in the constant white of the works: here everything is being continually reshaped, remodeled, transformed.’

S. von Wiese, Construction Sites. On the sculptural œuvre of Inge Mahn, in Inge Mahn. Baustellen/Construction Sites, Wienand Verlag, 2011

One of the most respected painters today, Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) constantly questions the methods and means of painting to raise a sense of awareness of the medium, which he aims to reinvent and to reshape, always in opposition to traditional hierarchies. Albert Oehlen has been continually colliding various styles, orders or mediums since the 80’s, expanding the notion of painting to ‘what he wants to see’.

‘Albert Oehlen long ago constructed the possibility of his own painting. Yet at the beginning the road seemed not merely a narrow alley, it looked like a dead end. What then? Give up and turn back? Or take a hammer and drive a tunnel through the solid amorphous mass before him? Albert Oehlen was one of the very few to take up that hammer. And when he started he struck mighty blows. It was in materials, expression, history and genre – in everything his immediate predecessors had progressively demolished with their hammers – that Oehlen stated his determination not to give in. His possibility of painting had to be built from the foundations. No gratuitous transgressions, no irony or cynicism – even if it is true that some used these terms to disparage his efforts to be free of artistic propriety. Instead Oehlen went looking where nobody else did, plunging into the piles of detritus abandoned by the wayside of an era. Then a final task remained: that of interweaving painting as history with the position of the painter and with the society out of which both painting and painter emerge in order to reflect on it.’

A. Pontégnie, The history of abstraction seemed to be finished in Albert Oehlen, Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2011

‘Super Group is the first of three bodies of work. They go together. Have something in common. Themes. Stories. What I know. What I like. What I like to know. What I want to know. Knows and looks that have to do with music and counter culture.
The second body is The Ripple Paintings.
The third is High Times.

In 2011 I was checking out my collection of Sonic Youth albums. I pulled out the records and removed the records from the sleeves. There were nine sleeves. I laid out the sleeves in a grid, three on top of three on top of three. Another square. I looked at it and called it Nine Sonic Youths. That excited me. The name, the title connected the abstraction and made it less abstract. It looked like art.

‘Sometimes you get what you need’

Supergroup is what I needed. And sometimes what you need is all you need.
I’d been working with sleeves on and off for four years, they weren’t right, they weren’t finished. They didn’t have extra extra. They had a verse and bridge but they didn’t have a hook.
Super Group became the hook. Sum, total, whole.
I can stack Roy Orbison, Chuck D, Bill Evans, Patsy Cline, The Pretenders, and Lee Renaldo on one sleeve.
Standard. Staple. Classic. Popular.
The whole sleeve can be a hit.’

R. Prince, Super Group, Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2017

‘[...] Schnabel is an extraordinary transformer, making history out of the everyday and making the familiar historic. It requires a body of work that has a strong metaphoric quality, an art that is about illusion, association, imagination. Even when his paintings are most abstract they are all about content, history, and emotion. Expertly installed and linked with their surroundings Schnabel's work can bring about the utmost stereophonic impact on the emotional state of all, the architecture, the painting, and the viewer.’

M. Hollein, Paintings and Their Surroundings in Summer. Julian Schnabel. Paintings 1976–2007, Skira, 2007

Since the late 1970s, Thomas Struth (b. 1954) has been capturing our time. Reconciling forms of documentation and contemplation, his photographs frame the world today as seen through empty streets in different cities, cultural venues, and scenes of worship, as well as images of nature, family portraits, and, more recently, sites of industrial and technological innovation, often underlining the tension between banality and the sublime. The examination of different situations and their impact on collective behaviour is typical of the artist’s work. His recent images introduce new subjects of reflection, such as the relationship between humans and machines.

‘Thomas Struth is a reluctant modernist. On the one hand, his photographs seek to capture, in non-distinct street scenes and amongst groups of anonymous tourists, the beauty found in ephemeral and fugitive moments rather than poses honed by tradition. These photographs discover beauty in what had been, before the advent of modernity, considered off-limits to aesthetic contemplation: the allegedly soulless architecture of post-war Europe; the poor dwellings in the emerging world; the back areas and unacknowledged zones where museums, cathedrals and other spaces of spiritual and cultural gathering are purely functional sites of usage. But in many of his photographs, Struth does not simply discover but inscribes beauty in unexpected places.’

U. Baer, ‘The Reluctant modernism of Thomas Struth’, in exh. cat., Thomas Struth, Napoli: MADRE Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, 2008

A central tenet of Christopher Wool’s (b. 1955) practice is the very process of painting itself. This has been explored and developed since his early years through reducing form and colour, as well as experimenting with different painting styles and reproduction techniques, such as silkscreen or pattern rollers, overlaying and erasing, covering or obscuring with paint, and adding layers on top. The range of techniques Wool has used over the years makes reference to the processes and gestures that have marked contemporary art history. The artist’s complex work encourages the viewer to reflect on the physical qualities of paint and various modes of reproduction, while honing an awareness of painting procedures and the essential elements of the medium: colour, form and line.

‘Christopher Wool’s paintings seem to capture visual urban experience, carved out of a moment for the duration of an artwork – an artwork that coverts the structures of experience into the structures of painting. Non-specific moments and impressions are lifted out of context and fixed into details of a painting that, unlike graffiti, conveys the speed and concentration of its origin only when it is contemplated over a measure of time in an art space. The dynamic of the picture’s conception becomes, very gradually, the dynamite of the thought it contains. Thought pictures.’

F. Meschede, ‘The Nothingness before nothing’ in Christopher Wool, Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2007