Florian Süssmayr shows (2020)
Florian Süssmayr began to paint Saint Sebastian long before Corona. Now, the imagery of the patron saint of plague victims hits a special nerve. Therefore, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle is all the more delighted to open its doors again and present you the newest works of this Munich-based painter.
It is not the subject of Saint Sebastian as such that interests the artist—Süssmayr focuses his attention on the surface laid over it, the one in front of it, which changes the pictorial space through interventions. Surfaces are the thematic thread that spins through the exhibition Florian Süssmayr zeigt (2020).
Florian Süssmayr began to paint Saint Sebastian long before Corona. Now, the imagery of the patron saint of plague victims hits a special nerve. Therefore, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle is all the more delighted to open its doors again and present you the newest works of this Munich-based painter.
It is not the subject of Saint Sebastian as such that interests the artist—Süssmayr focuses his attention on the surface laid over it, the one in front of it, which changes the pictorial space through interventions. Surfaces are the thematic thread that spins through the exhibition Florian Süssmayr zeigt (2020).
On view for the first time are large-format textile works that play with overlapping motifs and media in a manner typical for the artist. They are based on some of his curtain paintings, which he photographed and manipulated digitally to finally use them as a basis to create woven textiles. These works were made in cooperation with the Augsburg Textile and Industry Museum (tim) in this technique using their looms. They are doubled constructions of textile and texture, material and materiality.
One of the curtain paintings was part of last year’s exhibition Hey Psycho! at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, which took place during the Biennale di Venezia. In it, curator Wolfgang Scheppe juxtaposed Florian Süssmayr’s with conceptual artist Douglas Gordon’s works. Both artists share a self-reflexive way of working and a fondness for Alfred Hitchcock’s device of mirror images in the 1960 film Psycho. Their Self Portraits show that “that both artists only approach their perception of the world through the agency of mediatization. Mimesis or the imitation of perceived nature is inevitably already overcome as a deceptive immediacy.” Hence, their own view of things is firmly inscribed in each image.
A-boards, which we usually see in front of bars or coffeeshops, extend the two-dimensional surface into the physical space. In this part of the exhibition, visitors pass several subjects Florian Süssmayr is known for. But instead of presenting today’s specials, they open new visual worlds.
