Olaf Quantius

“Les Chaperons”

Private view: Friday, 7 March, 2008, 7 pm
Duration: 8 March - 19 April, 2008
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday, noon - 7 pm

The exhibition Les Chaperons is now Olaf Quantius’ fourth individual exhibition at KUTTNER SIEBERT Galerie. As always, this exhibition is also naturally about painting.
The simultaneous acceptance and rejection of painting as a medium is both subject and technique of the work on view here. This dualism also lies at the basis of the motifs chosen and the formal vocabulary: the people represented join to form couples, the abstract works are based on a mirrored composition or formal means, like pasteous or sprayed spots, emerging from them, or drawing their shadows with them.
During the Tour de France 2007 “les chaperons” were those who accompanied each rider before and after each race to prevent doping. “Der Urbegleiter: Requiem für ein verworfenes Organ” [“The Primeval Chaperone: Requiem for a Rejected Organ”] is the title of the fifth chapter of the first volume in Peter Solterdijk’s sphere trilogy. Alongside his considerations about the placenta, in 2005 the painting “Wächter” [Guards] emerged; this painting, now done in reverse colors, marks the starting point of the series Les Chaperons. It shows two tribal warriors from New Guinea: first of all, the fact that they are two warriors. One accompanies the other, providing moral support and protection. Furthermore, the color and the reference back to the work from 2005 marks a negative in and before which the positive image develops. Finally, the fact that the painting depicts warriors from a world spared from civilization, an archaic space in which the fetal process of subjectivization can take place, and that they seem almost to guard. The woolen blankets with which part of the walls and the base of a display case are covered can thus be understood as a derivative of a protecting, enveloping second skin.
The lint remover and the Tibetan prayer wheel in the exhibition function in an equally complementary way. Despite their mechanically similar functional principle, they come from entirely different contexts, leading to a civilization that does not suffice us, and an archaic world that we no longer reach. The objects thus illustrate the sensation that lies at the basis of simultaneous acceptance and denial, longing for and refusal of painting mentioned above.
Works by Olaf Quantius can also be seen until April 13, 2008 at the group exhibition “Aus einem malerischen Land” curated by Basis Wien at Salzburg’s Hangar7 and from May 25 to June 22 in the group exhibition “Backdraft” at the exhibition space Klingental in Basel.