Florin Kompatscher: TINT

The seemingly random and spontaneous lines and formations in the paintings of Florin Kompatscher are reminiscent of an airy constellation of individual, yet corresponding comic panels. Recently he has taken this to the extreme and developed it into a spatially perceptible, accessible construct in the world of symbols—from panel painting and wall painting to sculpturally formed lineatures. Yet another explorer of the phenomena of a visual subjectivity is Albert Oehlen—both painters, Kompatscher and Oehlen, know and appreciate each other, and Oehlen likewise juxtaposes the invariably dominant abstraction of his painting with isolated figurative elements. Both thus abrogate a tradition that saw abstraction in strict opposition to illusionistic representationalism in painting. Oehlen coined the wonderful term of "post-non-representationality" for this; with Kompatscher this can be expanded to the even more paradoxical concept of "post-pre-representationality." Or simply said, according to Merleau-Ponty: "Nothing is more difficult than to know precisely what we see."

Margareta Sandhofer is an Austrian publicist; she writes regularly for the Austrian art magazine Parnass and has published numerous catalog articles on Herbert Brandl, Michael Kienzer, and Walter Pichler, among others. Florin Kompatscher, born in 1960, is a South Tyrolean painter who lives in Berlin. Kompatscher has traveled the world and has had numerous solo exhibitions from Madrid to Rome, Berlin and Cologne; since 1993 his work has also been presented in various group exhibitions, including the Belvedere in Vienna, Taxispalais in Innsbruck, Museion in Bolzano, Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin or the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. Sandro Droschl, born in 1970, is curator and since 2013 director of Künstlerhaus Graz. Gregor Jansen, born in 1965, is director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. He has curated exhibitions with Rita McBride, Albert Oehlen, Thomas Ruff, and Marijke van Warmerdam, among others, and has published numerous catalogs for his exhibitions.