17.10.-29.11.08

The backstage area is a place where, for the most part, you are only allowed as an insider or as a VIP. It is also a place of rumors, myth, and creation. Simply somewhere you’d actually liked to be. It is with this very place of desire Dominik Stauch is flirting, by selecting the title of his current exhibition.

In recent years he has worked consistantly on elaborating paintings by combining different media (oil painting, digital prints, computer animations, installations and sculptures), sticking to the color and form theory. He always remained a painter, aiming at assembling colors and forms in a harmonious way. The reduction to geometrical basic form is giving him the needed scope to harmonize his conceptual approach to the latest techniques. Art history, music theory of the 20th century, and the beat literature are offering him the required basis to fill his works with the familiar profoundness.

Dominik Stauch is not presenting large works this time.(1) The only expansive work is a screen, which divides the room into two spaces. On one side of the screen one can read BAD, on the other one GOOD, by means of supposed bricks. As in “life” he is dividing the room into good or bad, thereby including or excluding. It is only a question of position, which one turns out to be the good side; and mostly the good ones are on your side anyway. The work is contradictorily and profound and clearly shows the dilemma of the artistic creative process: Not every work is a masterpiece, and only by sounding and scrutinizing ideas and sometimes by refusing them, something new and exciting may emerge. So for the first time the artist is letting us participate in his creative process.

He lived and worked in Berlin for half a year and is now showing a selection of works, which were created during his stay.

The wide interests of the artist are impressively documented in dozens of works on paper and they are showing an intricate insight into the world of his thoughts and feelings. At exhibitions reverse glass paintings, video projects, and installations were shown so far. He is now opening, similar to a cabinet, his substantial collection of materials. Containing sketchy abstracts as well as realistically composed works on paper. Showing us a wonderful “panopticon”. Several sheets can be arranged into themed groups. A whole series is dedicated to the theme ”Guitars”. He skillfully goes back and forth from art history (for example the cubistic deconstructions) to pop-and rock culture. Another recurring topic is the horseman – beginning with Franz Marc and ending with the cowboys of Hollywood. The work “Rubber Soul” shows his interest in different issues of never-ending drawings. Two elaborated “Flight trials” are decorating the exhibition room, being the only works not done on paper.

Dominik Stauch skillfully explores the complete repertoire of culture in regards to contexts of advertisement, commerce, and every day culture. Much is indicated, some of it is converted. The result is a declaration of love to role models, an actual homage to culture. is mutating from the artist’s creation pool into the huge, universal pool from which we derive our today’s cultural understanding.

(1) There is a current exhibition of Dominik Stauch`s installation works at the Grenchen Kunsthaus: Watching the River Flow, 14. September to 9. November 2008.

Bernhard Bischoff, October 2008

Translation: Patricia Kornfeld