Jakob Gasteiger | Extract

20th May - 1st July 2023

Rua De Sao Bernardo, 15, Lisbon

Encounter and Richeldis Fine Art are pleased to present Jakob Gasteiger, Extract, opening on Friday 19th May 2023. The exhibition brings together an important collection of paintings created between 2015-2023. This selection of works are representative of the distinct visual language for which Gasteiger has become institutionally renowned. The show includes works taken from series recently exhibited in the artist’s retrospectives at The Albertina and Salzburg Museum, Austria.

Gasteiger predominately paints using a hand-cut cardboard comb to create his distinctive minimal abstract compositions. This unique approach to making was initially developed in the 1980’s as a radical counterpoint to the Expressionist tendencies prevalent in Austria’s contemporary painting scene at the time. Often working in series or bodies of works, Gasteiger’s enduring vision and process has been refined and consistently employed over the last four decades. The artist has been recognised internationally for his unique visual language and philosophy of making, which collapses boundaries between painting, architecture and sculpture. Different from other traditions of minimalism, that often carry symbolic suggestions or transcendental associations, the works that emerge from Gasteiger’s studio are self-referential in their unwavering exploration of purely formal concerns. Often monochromatic and exclusively produced with a specific production method, Gasteiger deliberately controls and limits the parameters by which a painting comes into being. As such, in his paintings there is a heightened emphasis on issues of scale, depth, composition, colour, material and texture. In this sense, the exhibition explores the thematics of extraction and repetition from multiple perspectives. Not only does the artist continuously drag paint away from his canvases, but he is also concerned with the obfuscation of wider visual reference, narrative and the symbolic. Gasteiger’s work is a process of production born out of reduction, a clarity of vision and process distilled to its elemental form. Gasteiger uses his comb as a tool to create distance and detachment between himself and the work, a conscious move away from expressive gesture. The artist often mixes glass, copper, iron or aluminium powder into his paint, a material occurrence that references his industrial processes of making whilst also questioning the fundamental properties of painting itself. In this manner the works sit on an unstable edge between painting and sculpture, spatial object and architecture. The works profound effect is in their material presence and rhythmic repetition. Their minimal strategies transform the way in which we read form and decipher the space around us.

Extract runs until 1st July 2023.

Planning your Visit

Encounter, Rua de Sao Bernardo 15, RC, 1200 823, Estrela, Lisboa

Wednesday - Saturday 2-7pm and by appointment

Jakob Gasteiger, was born in Salzburg in 1953 and now lives in Vienna and the Weinviertel. The artist attended the University of Music and Performing Arts in Salzburg from 1970 to 1974. In 1990, he received the Faistauer Prize for Painting and in 2017, the Appreciation Award of the Visual Arts for the Province of Lower Austria. In 2019, Gasteiger was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honor for Services to the Province of Lower Austria. As an important representative of analytical painting the artist questions the parameters of painting and thematizes, expands and subverts boundaries of graphics, painting and sculpture. His predominantly monochrome paintings with relief-like structures are formed using an artist designed comb spatula to apply the paint. This group of works form the most extensive and best-known series by the artist.

Over his forty year career Gasteiger has held important gallery exhibitions across Austria and worldwide with international galleries including Margarete Roeder, Thaddaeus Ropac and Bechter Kastowsky. In May 2023 ‘Jakob Gasteiger : Extract’ will be presented at Encounter, Lisbon in collaboration with Richeldis Fine Art. Selected institutional solo exhibitions include ‘Jakob Gasteiger : Post Radical Painting’, The Albertina, Vienna (2021), ‘Jakob Gasteiger, Works 1985 – 2015’ Salzburg Museum, Salzburg (2016) and ‘Jakob Gasteiger’ at Kunstlerhaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2012), Kunstlerhaus Wien, Vienna (2011), Nexus Kunsthaus, Vienna (2010), Landesgalerie am Oberösterreichischen Landesmuseum, Linz (2006), Kunsthalle Krems, Krems (2005), Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Rupertinum, Salzburg (2002), The Austrian Cultural Institute, New York (1992). Recent institutional group exhibitions include ‚‘Rendezvous with the Collection; Art from 1960 to Today’, Landesgalerie Niederösterreich, Krems (2022), ‘Tour of the Force – Point, Line, Colour on the Way through Austrian Art after 1945’, Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus (2021), ‘o.T.’, Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus (2020), ‘The Liaunig Collection on the Move’, Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus (2019), ‘Abstract Painting Now’, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems (2018), ‘Light, Colour, Form’, Laszlo Vass Collection, Hungary (2016), ‘Augen-Blicke’, Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus (2016),‘Near Distance’, Landesmuseum Niederösterreich, St. Pölten (2015), ‘Aspekte des Feuers’ Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Benediktinerstift Admont (2015), ‘Farbiges Grau’, Mies van der Rohe-Haus, Berlin (2013), ‘Land in Sicht!’ Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg (2013), ‘Sammlung zeitgenössischer’ Belvedere Museum, Vienna (2012), ‘Abstraction and Reality’, Museum Essl, Klosterneuburg (2011), ‚‘Painting : Process and Expansion’, MUMOK Modern Art Museum, Vienna (2010). Gasteiger’s works can be found in numerous important public collections such as The Albertina, Belvedere Museum, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunstforum Wien, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Museum Liaunig, Museum Angerlehner, Lentos Museum, Sammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbank Wien and many more.