Susanne PaeslerWerke 1991–2006

Susanne Paesler, born in Darmstadt in 1963 and died in Berlin in 2006, belonged to a generation of artists that had taken leave of the modernist conception of the picture as a site of ever new aesthetic visions outdoing one another. In her artistic work she examines instead the status of the artwork in a world of already existing images and reproducible aesthetic structures. On the face of it, Paesler cultivates the geometric formal language of an entirely self-referential Constructivist artwork, yet pattern and choice of colour repeatedly point to contexts outside the picture. Accordingly, these paintings call to mind cheap woollen blankets, Burlington socks or Burberry coats – everyday objects, that is, which she uses as motif and model for her works. Instead of stretching the fabric directly onto the stretcher in accordance with the principle of the readymade (and thereby taking up Palermo’s fabric paintings), she copies the patterns by hand, so that art, craft and design enter into a fluid exchange with one another. Given this thrust, it then seems almost logical that in the course of the 1990s Susanne Paesler turned to the motif of the frame – now as a painted (!) pictorial boundary –, to trompe-l’œil and to the theme of the picture within the picture. The unique, the authentic, is an aesthetic vision that Paesler distrusts. The catalogue accompanying 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