"Landschaft 1", 2008, Lack, Kunstharz, Fiberglas, Styroporkern/ enamel, epoxy resin, fiberglass on Polystyrene. 222 x 185 cmImage 1 of 15

Galerie Barbara Thumm Markgrafenstrasse 68 10969 Berlin Germany (city map) Send E-mail tel +49 (0)30 - 259 429 84 www.bthumm.de

Christian Hoischen

Geklärt im rechten Winkel (Clarified in the right angle)

04.09. - 04.11. 2008

Private view on Wednesday, 03. September, 7-9 pm

We are delighted to announce the third solo exhibition by Christian Hoischen at the gallery.

Luminous red, blue, and signal-yellow traces of graffiti wander across the surfaces of Christian Hoischen's new paintings. Harmless cumulus clouds, a heavily curtained window and three Eurofighters flying in formation have been conspicuously marked by the nonchalant employment of the spray can. With this aggressive gesture, Christian Hoischen broadens the repertoire of disturbances in his paintings, previously present in the form of spilled paint, splatters, scratches and blurring. Yet the destructive act is an integral part of the formative concept. Christian Hoischen's artistic method consists in the application of coats of lacquer to a transparent fibreglass surface. In the process, the image is mirror-inverted - the foreground is painted or poured first, as is also the case with the traces of graffiti. Once the lacquer has hardened, the fibreglass is turned around and laminated onto a Styrofoam plate. The graffiti accordingly becomes a fundamental part of the pictorial idea and determines the composition to a decisive degree.

The impression of spatial depth conveyed by the painting, however, is to be attributed to an unusual technique. In the details, the motifs reveal minimalistic colour progressions and material structures which evoke an image of elements scattered in a wild landscape. This impression is enhanced by the special surface aesthetic of the layers of lacquer. The picture appears to shine through glass now frosted-matte, now shiny-clear, thus evading the viewer's visual grasp. The gaze encounters opaque layers of paint or, in areas free of paint, can make its way through to the grainy surface of the Styrofoam plate. The garish graffiti line heightens the colourful, material-bound iridescence, the work's plasticity.

Images from public printed media, advertising and film serve Christian Hoischen as motifs, which he shows in enlarged or severely cropped form. Stage magicians, athletes or politicians, explosions, car accidents and scenes of crude intimacy alternate with still lifes of a neglected potted plant or a purely functional stepladder. It is not the skilful reproduction of images already drained of meaning through their inflationary circulation that constitutes the quality of Christian Hoischen's painting. It is his aggressiveness in the breaking open of perspectives, the openly fought conflict between overpainting and omission, and the scepticism toward the hierarchy of imagery which account for the strong lure of his works.

Christian Hoischen continues his experimental handling of colour and form in his collages and works on paper. In "Malewitsch / Xavex Hedgefonds", stringently formalized elements such as squares and straight lines are enhanced with cut-out, glued and spray-painted paper. All works, as well as the threads stretched across paper - now loosely, now forming an open trapezium - are presented behind glass, in some cases with passe-partouts in various colours, and in wooden frames.

The artist's "Leuchten" (lamps) are hybrids of the materiality of his paintings and the geometric transformations of his works on paper, translated into space. Reinforced concrete fragments of varying lengths with unworked ends jut out into the space of the gallery. The weakly shining light bulb mounted on the upper end places purist functionality and minimalist sculpture into a single, tension-filled context. In the large-scale sculpture, reinforced concrete elements clash with a lacquer-coated metal one, mutually deforming one another with all vehemence. The interplay sparked in the painting between disturbance/destruction and formation/construction is here taken to an uncompromising extreme.