Staying With The Pictures

The probing scrutiny of painting and its boundaries has been a constant in Tobias Hantmann’s (b. Kempten, 1976; lives and works in Dusseldorf and Berlin) oeuvre, as has the study of how works of art are conceived and the conceptual strand in art. His choice of media may seem baffling; most saliently, he works with velour rugs, delineating complex and typically figurative motifs solely by raising and compressing the pile. At first glance, the aesthetic result looks like monochrome painting, yet the very choice of medium implies a promise concerning the emerging representation. Hantmann, who studied with Jan Dibbets and Georg Baselitz, explores the interplay between staging and material and sheds light on their distinctive prerequisites, raising questions about the status of the picture and the relation between visual content and form. The catalogue Staying with the Pictures documents his approach with a spotlight on his most recent solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Giessen and includes a body of work by the artist that has never been on public view. With essays by Nadia Ismail, Dieter Rubel, and Christine Moldrickx.