The recent exhibition at MUMOK Vienna, entitled Painting: Process and Expansion, presented painting as a processual and self-reflecting medium, just as it dealt with the expansion of painting into the third dimension. Herbert Brandl contributed tables to the show whose tops were thickly covered in paint, as well as so-called Schmieragen, paintings on paper echoeing Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, as they were not so much painted by brush but rather dripped, the paint applied by a spatula or splashed on. In our fourth solo show dedicated to Brandl, we now present these same works, supplemented by new, fairly small-sized oil paintings on canvas. The paint stays visible as painting matter, and on the table tops builds up distinctly into structured reliefs, while in the Schmieragen it betrays its relation to gravity through rivulets and lakes. “The motto is finding rather than invention. Schmierage and Palettentisch, or simply Tisch, are the blunt titles of the ready mades emerging as by-products from the work process. The artistic act is here reduced to selection and presentation.” (Edelbert Köb) In contrast to the large, thin-skinned paintings, that take shape in one uninterrupted painting process by way of great gestures and at great physical exertion, Brandl in the smaller oil paintings builds picture on picture into haptically pastose compositions of the colour bodies.

Herbert Brandl, born in Graz in 1959, professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy since 2004, lives and works in Vienna. Numerous solo and contributions to group exhibitions since 1981, e.g. 1986 Hacken im Eis, Kunsthalle Berne, and Museum of the 20^th Century, Vienna; 1990 Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; 1991 Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent (solo); 1992 documenta IX Kassel; 1993 Der zerbrochene Spiegel, Kunsthalle Vienna and Deichtorhallen Hamburg; 1998 Herbert Brandl Sezession, Secession Vienna; 1999 Kunsthalle Basle (solo); 2002 Herbert Brandl Panorama, Kunstraum Innsbruck; 2002 Es gibt kein letztes Bild. Malerei nach 1968, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basle; 2005 China retour, MUMOK Vienna; 2007 Austrian Pavilion La Biennale di Venezia (solo); 2008 Die Sammlung, Neue überraschende Einblicke in die Sammlungsbestände, Essl Museum Klosterneuburg; 2009 Deichtorhallen Hamburg (solo); 2010 Painting: Process and Expansion, MUMOK Vienna. Together with the Vienna Albertina we have conceived the latter’s current exhibition, entitled Herbert Brandl Berge & Landschaften, Monotypien 2009 – 2010 (22.10.10 – 09.01.11), as well as a publication to go with it.

Herbert Brandl