This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Gesture and Territory, Petzel Gallery, New York, October 10 – November 9, 2013. Eggerer’s enlarged and flattened-out spaces signal new complexities that arise in his narratives. The figures that populate these works are busy, yet they labor at tasks that remain rather mysterious. They are neither joyous nor tragic in effect, but are absorbed in their actions—as performative agents in landscapes with no clear-cut horizon lines, an ambivalent opacity allows questions to emerge about the indistinct boundary between both labor and leisure, and subject and object. While drawing has always been a key component in Eggerer’s painting, sumptuous color now plays a central role in relation to his drawing: the newly enlarged figures are now embedded in expansive fields of color that have been poured, brushed, and scrubbed, effectively reversing the artist’s usual hierarchy of figure and ground.
Author: Devin Fore
Publisher: Petzel Gallery, New York, 2013
Language: English
Softcover: 52 pages
7.5 in x 10 in
ISBN: 978-0-615-88078-5
About the artist
Thomas Eggerer (b. 1963 Munich, West Germany) was trained as a painter at the Art Academy in Munich. After moving to New York in 1994, he became part of the legendary art collective Group Material. His practice now focuses on painting, drawing, and collage, and his works often portray figures in an abstract, surreal landscape. He is a regular faculty member at the MFA program at Bard College.
Solo exhibitions of his work have taken place at 15 Orient, Brooklyn; Maureen Paley, London; Galerie Bucholz, Cologne; Richard Telles, Los Angeles; Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands; Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.
In 2015, Eggerer participated in La Biennale de Lyon. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at David Zwirner, New York; Queer Thoughts, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Brandhorst Museum, Munich; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; White Columns, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Vancouver Art Gallery; CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco; and the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt among others.
His work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Sammlung Boros, Berlin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; and the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, Germany.
