Susanne Paesler: Werke 1991–2006

Modernity as a pattern

Susanne Paesler, who died in Darmstadt in 1963 and in Berlin in 2006, belonged to a generation of artists who had bid farewell to the modernist concept of the image as a place of ever new, mutually trumping aesthetic visions. Instead, in her artistic work she discussed the significance of the artwork in a world of pre-existing images and reproducible aesthetic structures. On the surface, Paesler cultivates the geometric formal language of an entirely self-referential constructivist artwork, but the patterns and choice of colours repeatedly point to non-pictorial contexts. Accordingly, these pictures are reminiscent of cheap woollen blankets, Burlington socks or Burberry coats, i.e. everyday objects that she uses as motifs and models for her works. Instead of stretching the fabric directly onto the stretcher frame, following the principle of the readymade (and thus echoing Palermo's fabric paintings), she copies the patterns by hand, so that art, craftsmanship and design enter into a flowing exchange with one another. Based on this approach, it seems almost logical that in the course of the 1990s Susanne Paesler began to explore the motif of the frame - as a now painted (!) picture border -, the trompe-l'œil and the picture-within-a-picture theme. The unique, the authentic, is an aesthetic vision that Paesler distrusts. The catalogue for the first survey exhibition presented by the Kunstmuseum Bonn comprises a total of 40 works from 1991 to 2006.

Exhibitions:
Kunstmuseum Bonn, 25/1 - 5/6/2016
Schauwerk Sindelfingen, 19/6/2015 - 22/1/2017