About the work
"The tension between idea and materialisation, image and carrier, is found as a scupulous tinkering and dyeing process, literally in the seam, which thus becomes the structural element of the "bust pictures". But that is not enough. If the "seam" is so formally exposed and at the same time thematically triggered (by using, for example, the illusionary tool of the trumpet), it already goes to the limits of painterly questions of form. the illusionary tool of trompe-l'oeil back into hard facts, just to achieve the striking association of denim jeans), bosoms burst out of it, singly or in groups, usually flat, painted flat, milky pale or enriched with strange, half-representational half-formless inserts (walls, street scenes, brushstroke patterns), sometimes splashing aggressively on the picture surface or just discreetly dripping illusionistically in the picture. The bosom as pars pro toto is at the same time a flat joke about the eternal threatening image of the iconic (as it is particularly rooted in the painterly image promise and against which the concept of modernism up to Minimal and Concept Art so vehemently defended itself) and its self-confident claim. Rarely, at any rate, had bosoms been shown more drastically in painting before, rarely had more poitically conceived images been seen."
from: Hans-Jürgen Hafner: A new face of hell. in: Monika Baer, Editor: Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin / Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles; Walther König, Köln, 2011, p. 18
About the artist
Monika Baer
born 1964 in Freiburg
lives and works in Berlin
Monika Baer studied in the class of Alfonso Hüppi at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1985 to 1992. From the very beginning, Monika Baer questions the possibilities and limits of painting and what ultimately elevates it to an art. Becaus painting in her opinion, is not automatically art.
"When a medium is as loaded with mythology, politics, expectations, and convention as painting, it an be hard to purpurse it without beeing expected to also say something about painting. Baer welcomes this difficulty. Explanation or translation is unnecessary, for in her work significant exist apart from concrete meaning of narrative ends. The artist rejects such narrow readings of her paitings in favor of engagement with the complex occurrence on the canvas. Not limited to the literal meaning of surface and material, painting-precisely in its conventionality - can be understood understood as offering a highly symbolic form in which discourse and practice merge. Baer's work investigates this intersection. By constantly oscillating between the literal and the referential, she negotiates the possibilities of painting as a complex artistic language. Her paintings do say something about painting, and in so doing also make assertions about power, desire, and gender with their circulating currencies. "
from: Mark Godfrey - A new painting of spirit. In: Monika Baer - Große Spritztour. 2016, Editors: Susanne Titz & Christina Végh. p. 53 - 55