Matthias Weischer: o. T. (Zeichnung), 2007
Pastellkreide auf Papier, 26 x 34 cm
courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin.
Following their publication of a volume devoted to Matthias Weischer's paintings earlier this year, Hatje Cantz's publication of a second book, devoted to the drawings of the leading representative of the celebrated 'Leipzig school', coincides with a show of the same currently running at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin until December 23, which will then move to the Kloster Bentlage Rheine Gallery from January until March 9, 2008.
Weischer himself is presently a fellow-in-residence at the Villa Massimo in Rome, alongside Stefan Mauck, Aurelia Mihai, Carsten Nicolai and a number of architects, writers and composers. Here he is pursuing an interest in drawing that was renewed after spending 2005 in the company of David Hockney, as a participant in the yearlong 'Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative', a unique philanthropic programme that pairs upcoming practitioners from the visual arts, music, dance, theatre, film and literature in a one-on-one mentoring scheme with an established figure. Among the lessons imparted by the elder artist, Weischer notes that 'David always told me painting is an old man's work... I think you need 50, 40 years now to go really into it.'
While Weischer is known for his paintings of interiors that combine jarring and vertiginous depictions of space with hallucinatory pastel tones to nevertheless somber effect, his drawings - while still evincing a fondness for the geometry of domestic architectural settings - are arguably more playful and immediate, though they still have something of a dark side: skulls, shadowy corridors and dungeon-like rooms can all be seen, as well as the recurring presence of a mysterious silhouetted figure wearing a hat and smoking a pipe. No clear meaning can easily be read into these drawings, though - like the paintings, and like many of his peers including Tilo Baumgärtel, Isabelle Dutoit, Tom Fabritius and Jörg Lozek - they are bathed in a dreamy half-light that seems to suggest something of the disorientation of (Leipzig) life post-GDR.
Weischer has shown in a number of prestigious settings, none more so than at the 2005 Venice Biennale, where he exhibited eight canvases in the Italian Pavilion. The current show of works on paper is his first solo show in a public gallery in Berlin.
Matthias Weischer, The Garden - Works on Paper, Hatje Cantz, December 2007, edited by Galerie EIGEN+ART, texts by Wolfgang Holler, German/English. 144 pp., 49 ills., 18 in colour,
33 x 46cm,
half cloth
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