Annika Koops reflects on the paintings of Mattias Weischer

It has been said that the "crisis" in painting and current art and current art criticism, today, is brought about by pluralism: the ‘everything going on’ and consequently ‘nothing going on’ syndrome. I am reluctant to use this word to describe the work of Mattias Weischer as it feels like one of those evasive words that crops up so often in post-modern art criticism. Yet, within the paintings of Weischer there is a sort of timeworn, fatigued pluralism, a yellowed and stained version of the word, which operates on the level of both reflection, and refraction of the relationship between art and commerce. A recent show of his pictures, at the Gemeente Museum den Hague, cannily critiques a culture of regurgitation that is increasingly manifest between these two worlds.

'Fernsehturm (TV Tower)', 2004, Mattias Weischer

Weisher exploits the (arguably) retrogressive aspects of the act of painting in order to comment on its relationship to consumerism. A recent spate of critical culture regarding painting, particularly representational painting, refers to the act as ‘necrophilic’. This metaphor refers to the ‘death of painting’ and the indulgent sensuality of its pursuit in the face of new media and digital technology. It also presents the idea of painting as an act of transgressive defiance against the lust for the new – an act of resistance by the heroic rebel painter in a word dominated by speedy images. The counter image of this digital subjugator is one that of a sentimental, narcissistic luddite, fruitlessly hounding a defunct medium in an ‘almost dandy attempt at artificial respiration’.

The concept of dandyism is also strongly present within Weischers work, albeit in allegorical form. Baudelaire defined the dandy as “one who elevates æsthetics to a living religion… who’s delight in clothes and material elegance is no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.” Incarnations of dandyism, replete with it’s anti-bourgeoisie propensity, can be located in (initially) counter-cultural constructs such as Beatniks, Hippies, Punks, and Hipsters, and, predictably, in the their assimilation into mass culture and media. The manner in which these subcultures and their energies are dispersed into the market, demonstrates its capacity to evolve to the savvy nature of consumer by offering them symbolic ways of expressing discontent with mercenary culture and to neutralize feelings of inferiority caused by constantly buying what they are told to buy.

The ‘creative industry’ of marketing presents the image of the consumer, not as voracious narcissistic, but rather, as ‘freelance curator of self-expression’ . Consumerism teaches us to express our distaste, for things, through our things. Paradoxical manifestations of this sentiment can be found in examples as diverse as a painstakingly, manufactured brand new faded threadbare $90 Led zeppelin t-shirt or the ‘better homes and gardens’ segment that teaches you how to massacre an IKEA coffee table with shoe polish and a hammer to make it look ‘quaint’.

These strange double codings are symptomatic of a facet of postmodernism that speaks less of irony and more of a psychologically incongruous commodification of the concept of nostalgia. Anxiety is the grease to the wheel of consumerism, and the fear of a solitude re-affirmed each day by bodiless networks and false images of the world creates a yearning for a simpler past, even if it is a past we have not experienced. Whilst previously confined in time and place, nostalgia, today, engulfs the whole past. The aesthetics of nostalgia, in this respect, constitutes not a matter of simple memory but a complex projection; the summoning of a refracted, idealized history merged with despondency toward the present.

The idea of painting as ‘necrophilic’, ‘dandified’ or ‘nostalgic’ is inherently paradoxical. Does it represent regressive escape to an idealized, simpler era of "real" values and straightforward signifiers? Or does it express, through its ironic distance, a "sincere and legitimate dissatisfaction with modernity and the unquestioned belief in perpetual upgrading"? Neither of these absolutisms could possibly be correct, but they pose significant insight into the concept of nostalgia as inherently volatile. Luc Tymans explores this volatility through painting, and claims that the nostalgia is ‘horrific’. To elucidate this point he quotes a line from Robert Wilson; ‘A tree is best measured when it is down’

The analysis of nostalgia as psychotic or horrific is actually far closer to its original meaning than the fuzzy commercialised version that the word came to be known for. The term was coined, in 1688, by a 19-year old Swiss student as a way to talk about a potentially lethal kind of home-sickness. It was categorised as a ‘disorder of the imagination’; the yearning, by the patient, for his former abode was so great it caused him to become severely ill. The most telling distinction between this definition and contemporary development of the term, is that the original medical-pathological definition of nostalgia left room for resolve: the return home.

The fragmentation of our relationship to nostalgia and the notion of ‘home’ are present within the uncanny interiors created in Weischer’s paintings. He creates a psychological space that conjures both homeliness and horror. The, apparently, disordered rooms display a suffocating clutter full of strange repetitions and omnipotent recollection. Potentially comforting domiciliary items acquire a menacing verve through their painterly treatment.

Through illusory stylistic devices, such as Trompe-l'œil, Weischer employs a process of simulation that subverts pretensions to genuineness within consumer items and incorporates them into more complex discursive arguments. Within Weischer’s profusion a repeated motif is that of wood grain effect adhesive paper. What is cultural meaning of this object? Symbol of deficit? Thrifty disguise? Sardonic graphic designers kitsch fad? Or perhaps is it just another repetition that mourns the unauthenticity of all repetition.

Weischer’s rooms are typified by a juxtaposition of objects and complex system of signs which both parallel and rupture the cyclic mania of consumerism to reveals facets of its emotive exploitation of longing and escapism. Beneath the intricate appearance of fascinating aesthetics they can be seen as the fortresses of economic disaster.

Seemingly, flippant, ornamental motifs within Weischer’s work are shrewdly interpolated within the pictorial landscape in a manner that deconstructs their superficiality to reveal the greater, and graver social ramifications inherent in their symbolism. The work Paravent is an example of Weisher’s tendency to represent objects and design elements in a manner that questions the politics of their existence. The hallucinatory interior is host to numerous objects and remnants of domesticity that signify conflicting worlds, epochs and demographics. The object of the images title (paravent) dominates the image - a French boudoir screen decorated with Chinoiserie. Sinuous cherry blossoms and foliage adorn its surface (western decorative trappings paraphrasing traditional eastern imagery), an item that demonstrates the pervasive obsession with orientalism during 19th century arts and culture.

The relationship between the objects and their modes of representation pull us back and forth through time, between the 70s geometric pattern that tiles a vertical panel, to the contemporaneity of the fluoro-yellow picture frame that occupies the mid section. A panel of lurid 80s sunset-pinks gradates to light blue. A graphic of a lotus flower hangs, kitsch and familiar, lingering evocatively on the surface of the picture plane. It is explicit in its ratty ‘generic-ness’: at home on the on chipped and faded wall of a down-market Thai Restaurant or printed on the florid packaging of a mass-produced Asian beauty product. The seemingly random disjuncture, this arsenal of things, creates a dialog between the objects and their social implications, a kind of anthropological musing on the mutation of the power structures that conceived them. The ghostly multiplicity of this symbol hovers in the psyche like the phantom of an army of cheap labour.

Weisher’s technical ability is manifest within these spaces. This should come as no surprise, given his status as a New Leipzig School artist. The school maintains an emphasis on traditional techniques: draftsmanship, figure drawing, the use of grids, colour theory, composition and perspective. Weisher maintains a disregard for digital techniques, although the eclectic appearance of his paintings might be seen to reflect digital sentiments. When questioned as to whether he ever used computers however he replied:

"No, Absolutely not, I have no idea how to do it. I put the paintings together in a collage like manner, out of different elements; sometimes I use photographs, drawings, or fragments of memory."

Traditional processes are made explicit. Gridlines appear self-consciously apparent on the surface of the work like an algorithmic/analogue badge of honour. The emphasis on technique is primary, both in the reading of Weischer’s work and the implications it has on a social and critical level. One never really knows if his gestural marks are borne out of painterly revelry and experimentation or if they are a wizened parody of the act of painting. There is such a strained and sober classcicism in some areas of his work that his ‘painterly’ marks metaphorically equate to a meticulously crafted ‘casual’ hairdo. Constant contradiction occurs within his fractured rooms, reminding us of the unregenerate nature of simulation, as determined by John Berger:

"Now appearances are volatile. Technological innovation has made it easy to separate the apparent from the existent. And this is precisely what the present systems mythology continually needs to exploit. It turns appearances into refractions, like mirages: refractions not of light, but of appetite, in fact a single appetite, the appetite for more."

I viewed the exhibition with a Dutch friend whose reaction was less enthusiastic than my own. He summarized his aversion to Weischer’s style and approach as being too ‘polite’. At first I was unsure as to what he meant by this and thought perhaps it was a misinterpretation of linguistic meaning. As often happens with the use of language that comes from a different perspective, I was prompted into a shift in perception, and when I thought about it later the description seemed quite apt. There is something disconcertingly perverse about the way he applies the privilege of his training and painterly good manners to the tender refuse of the lower classes. It is this perversion that is also most effective in his description of the relationship between art and commerce. Weischer creates spaces that attract and repel, annoy and perplex, and seduce then abandon. In doing so, he avoids reductive, fundamentally bipartisan relationships and an all too familiar narrative. The truth, of course, is far more complex.

Annika Koops is a Tasmanian painter currently based in Rotterdam.

Image sourced from: http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/weidle/weidle9-16-5.asp