Untitled

Interrogating the formal language of modernism and questions of display, Heimo Zobernig’s artistic practice is characterized by strategies of simplification, standardization, systematization, and the appropriation of industrial models and patterns. Since the beginning of his career in the mid-1980s, he has worked in series across painting, sculpture, video, performance, contextual installations, architectural interventions, books, and design projects.

In Zobernig’s paintings, monochromes, grids, stripes, and a fixed palette of colors are recurring motifs, which he revisits over and over. Their painterly effects owe their existence to consistent methodological decisions. In 2012, Zobernig began a new gestural series of paintings inspired by a 2011 retrospective of works by Pablo Picasso at Kunsthaus Zurich, a restaging of the Spanish artist’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Kunsthaus in 1932. The show marked a turning point in modern exhibition history, since it was the first major retrospective of a living artist. Reconfiguring formal elements such as lines and amorphous color fields, Zobernig continues his exploration of Picasso’s works. This work is one of a series of paintings that show stylized motifs of flowers with leaves. In these paintings the vibrancy of color and line becomes more intense, even if the grid is retained as a frame of reference.

(Text written by TBA21 and used as wall label in the exhibition "Abundant Futures", C3A, Córdoba, 2022)