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5/3/2008

Jochen Klein

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

curated by Bernhart Schwenk in collaboration with Wolfgang Tillmans

The exhibition is dedicated to the final work period of the artist Jochen Klein, who died young (1967 – 1997). The immediate reason and focus of the show is provided by eight central paintings that the artist and partner of Jochen Klein, Wolfgang Tillmans, is donating to the Pinakothek der Moderne. Along with works on loan from private collections these pictures sketch the high point of an unmistakable oeuvre and at the same time mark a general turning point in painting of the 1990s – the repositioning of figurative painting with the experience of Concept Art. Along with Jochen Klein other fellow artists, some of them friends, pursued similar paths of conceptual figurative painting, among them Peter Doig, Thomas Eggerer, Silke Otto Knapp, Elizabeth Peyton, Amelie von Wulffen.

He started out with classical art studies under Hans Baschang at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. After qualifying, however, Jochen Klein initially abandoned painting and turned instead to conceptual projects. Influenced by the then widespread unease towards the medium of painting Klein joined Thomas Eggerer in becoming a member of Group Material, a Concept Art group based in New York. In this connection he worked with them on a number of different exhibitions largely focused on social history until the group was dissolved. He also wrote numerous essays on the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

After this eminently important period of abstinence from painting Jochen Klein took up this artistic medium again following his relocation to London in 1996. Right up to his sudden death in 1997 he worked with great energy on a painting, in which virtuoso colourism blends with the scepticism and experience of his conceptual projects.

Among the earliest pieces of the later work period are collaged pictures portraying geese, puppies and guinea pigs playing together in the grass. There is no further reference – at first glance a suspiciously harmless world, one that is the greatest imaginable contrast to the cool installations of Conceptual Art. Aesthetic experience of everyday life served Jochen Klein as source of inspiration: photo wallpapers, magazine advertisements, drugstore calendars, erotic films from the 1970s. He recognised in these motifs the vocabulary of a collective consciousness in whose cliché-like nature cryptic messages for individual desires are mirrored. Paradoxically there is a sense of intimacy in this very distance, underlining the artist’s interest and ability to see what is used in a new light.

The best known pictures of this most important and final period of Jochen Klein’s life show idyllic scenes in rural settings: meadows of flowers, forest glades, trunks of birch trees, autumn leaves. Figures appear here and there, partly collaged, partly painted – but practically always in contrast to an almost stylised background. The motivic quality of the pictures reminds one of those idyllic shepherd scenes and construed landscapes that were so popular in18th century painting. It is only on closer investigation that the ambivalence of these scenarios comes to light.

In Jochen Klein’s pictorial reality experienced reality blends with utopian desires, political sensitivity mediates with personal self-assertion. Traditional, sometimes cliché-like and kitsch forms of representing nature, feminity and childhood are transformed into pictorial compositions of great sophistication with many meanings. They impart a sense of ‚joie de vivre’, but also a marked awareness of a vulnerable and transient physicality.

Wolfgang Tillmans’ generous donation of eight significant paintings by Jochen Klein to the Pinakothek der Moderne is a great enrichment – and that in more ways than one: on the one hand, Jochen Klein’s paintings continue an important focus of the Sammlung Moderne Kunst, namely figurative painting of the 20th century ranging from Kirchner, Dix and Bacon to Rauch and Doig. On the other, the works complement with their numerous references the „Munich Installation“ of Wolfgang Tillmans, which was acquired for the museum three years ago thanks to PIN., Friends of the Pinakothek der Moderne. And finally, Jochen Klein represents an important link to the succeeding generation of young artists.

Opening: 06.03.2008, 19

Pinakothek der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40 - Munich

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