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until 04.06. | #3417ARTatBerlin | neugerriemschneider presents from 30. April 2022 (Opening 29.04) the exhibition Faule Stellen by the artist Thomas Bayrle. The gallery is also opening a new gallery space at Christinenstraße 18-19 with the exhibition “Durchscheinen ist alles” by the artist Thomas Bayrle (until 20.08).
Bayrle’s Faule Stellen features paintings and mixed-media prints that continue his career-long investigation of humankind’s relationship to industrialized mass production, employing multiplied modular forms to create intricate tableaux of modernity. Durchscheinen ist alles, the inaugural exhibition at our Christinenstrasse space, shows Bayrle engaging with his position among artistic peers, including Martin Kippenberger, Yayoi Kusama, Pablo Picasso and Elaine Sturtevant.
Recent works by Bayrle in Faule Stellen expand his adoption of the smartphone’s form as a component of imagemaking, deploying his signature technique of creating images from swarms of smaller, often distorted and warped motifs to shape portraits of industrial robots. He takes as his focus the mechanical arms now commonplace for repetitive manufacturing applications, building upon the artist’s fascination with the industrial mass production that continues to inform his practice. The pieces of machinery are positioned in the center of each composition, shown in various stages of their choreography-like articulation as if posed. Depicted against flattened backgrounds, they stand alone akin to subjects of formal studio portraits. Although highly automated, the machinery on display in Bayrle’s works often only supplements conventional labor rather than replacing it entirely – in such a capacity, it serves as a quasi-proxy for the human hand, parallel to Bayrle’s hybrid of digital and traditional modes of production.
Thomas Bayrle, Sturtevant blue flowers, 2021,
mixed media on pigment print on paper on cardboard, 111 x 88 cm,
© Thomas Bayrle, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn,
courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Foto: Wolfgang Günzel
For Durchscheinen ist alles, Bayrle takes as a point of departure his return to painting, closely reflecting upon the innovative approaches of his artistic forbearers and colleagues. The presentation’s eight monumentally sized canvases begin as detailed, full-color hand-applied imagery in the manner of traditional paintings. These are in turn obscured, printed over with networks of scaled-down motifs showing the repeated detail of a textured brushstroke. The brushstroke is typically understood as an expression of an individual artistic mark, but here this isolated motif is multiplied to illustrate various different portraits. The reshaped contours of Bayrle’s silhouetted, jet-black brushstrokes adhere to the now-concealed underlying paintings as if they were intended as preliminary sketches. These portraits are accompanied by a number of works on paper that translate the canvas’ imagery. In contrast to the works on canvas, these unique compositions are overlaid with color as gestural applications of acrylic.
Thomas Bayrle began to develop the technique of reconfiguring printed motifs into larger compositions in the late 1960s. This marked his shift from the mode of gestural painting that had characterized his work to that point, and brought on experimentation with printing techniques. By carefully arranging small, seemingly endless repetitions of everyday imagery, Bayrle would allow these downsized depictions to coalesce into larger, entirely new pictorial representations. He dubbed the result of this proto-computerized approach the “Superform.” While in retrospect reminiscent of digital production methods, it was not until the late 1980s that Bayrle began using an imageprocessing program. As a professor at Germany’s Städelschule from 1975 to 2002, Bayrle’s practices as a teacher and an artist informed one another in equal measure. There, he was in the position to impart his approaches to future generations, while simultaneously reviewing, reshaping and reinventing his own methodologies. Throughout Baryle’s career, he has continued to be uniquely forward-thinking, his practice often anticipating and pioneering advancements on a foundational level.
Thomas Bayrle, Claude Monet, 2021-2022, UV print on acrylic on linen, 315 x 250,5 x 4 cm,
© Thomas Bayrle, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn,
courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Photo: Jens Ziehe, Berlin
Thomas Bayrle (b. 1937) has been the focus of solo exhibitions at international museums and institutions including at New Museum, New York (2018); MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2016); Lenbachhaus, Munich (2016); Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, FR (2014); WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels (2013); Madre – museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples (2013); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, GB (2013); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2009); Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva (2009); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2008); and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main (2006). His work has been shown at leading exhibitions including three editions of documenta – 3, 6, and 13 – in Kassel (1964, 1977, 2012), the 8th Busan Biennale (2012), the 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008), the 9th Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon (2007), the 4th Berlin Biennale (2006), the 6th and 8th Gwangju Biennales (2006, 2010), the 2nd and 6th Guangzhou Triennials (2005, 2018) and the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales (2003, 2009). Bayrle has received several awards and prizes, including the Arnold-Bode-Preis (2012), the Cologne Fine Art Prize (2000) and the Prix Ars Electronica (1995).
Opening: Friday, 29. April 2022 – 6:00 bis 9:00 pm
Exhibition dates ‘Faule Stellen’, Linienstraße 155: Saturday, 30. April – Saturday, 4. June 2022
Exhibition dates ‘Durchscheinen ist alles’, Christinenstraße 18-19: Saturday, 30. April – Saturday, 20. August 2022
Special opening for the Gallery Weekend Berlin: Saturday, 30. April and Sunday, 1. May 2022
To the Gallery
Image caption titlel: Thomas Bayrle, Frida Kahlo (Gold), 2021, mixed media on pigment print on paper on cardboard, 111 x 88 cm, © Thomas Bayrle, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Photo: Wolfgang Günzel
Exhibition Thomas Bayrle – Galerie neugerriemschneider | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
