With the exhibition by Stefan Sandner, the Secession continues a tradition of presenting the oeuvre or a specific aspect of the recent work of an Austrian artist of the younger generation in a major show. A key element of Stefan Sandner’s work is the examination of the history of Minimalist painting, mainly from America (e.g., Kelly, Noland, Stella, and Mangold). His use of the shaped canvases of Noland or Stella, however, is not merely an art-historical quotation. Instead, Sandner uses this historical “technique” as a reference to the formal language of our everyday media world. Sandner’s interest focuses on the way images—regardless of their origin—are constructed and how they are related. In this sense, Sandner’s new works, in which fragments of hand-written notes (e.g., from Kurt Cobain’s diaries, anonymous scribblings on beer coasters, or private notes from friends) are applied to the canvas in isolation and out of context, can also be read as a meditation on the creation of meaning and (art) history.

“Zeug ist am Verschwinden“ (Stuff is disappearing) appears in giant hand-written letters. They do not just refer to the bulky items which a neighbour in Sandner’s studio building is apologizing for in a note jotted down on a piece of paper. Transported to the canvas and to the picture, the sentence relates to the destiny of the objects that meanwhile have vanished; moreover, it raises some fundamental issues of painting in general. While Sandner’s painting reproduces the handwritten letters on the note, the paint running down the canvas reveals the painter as a producer. The painting thus oscillates between original image and mimetic depiction.

Yet, these different and contradictory references do not result in an aesthetic of indifference. Quite the contrary: instead of allowing a perception that is infiltrated by the media in everyday life to find refuge in the protective space of arbitrariness, the artist makes repeated references in his work indicating that the relations between art and its contexts are variable, yet can be defined. Sandner’s imagery also finds contexts outside of the field of art. While the formal repertoire of minimalism became incorporated in the vocabulary of corporate design, he has adopted an opposite tack in his works, with large-format monochrome paintings triggering associations to the cool aesthetic of advertising. As the various modes of writing for the text paintings do, these abstract paintings, free of any manual signature, put the auctorial production at stake.