David Salle (b. 1952) numbers among the most important American painters in contemporary art. The catalog presents an exciting group of new large-format paintings combined with a choice selection of older works.

Salle is a lateral thinker. His education began at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, near Los Angeles, where Disney Studios was established, and where he studied visual art, film, theatre, ballet and music. References in Salle’s work not only reference artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol, but also Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Luc Godard. Painting and drawing as well as film and installation, performance and stage design can all be associated with Salle’s work.

The paintings of David Salle announce the end of painting’s grand narratives and how these narratives dissolve into numerous incompatible truths. The intoxicating and confusing compositions set up a coexistence and an interweaving of heterogeneous material. Salle cites from art history and superimposes upon it trivial motifs from cartoons and advertising. One moment, a whiff of Hollywood, the next moment, suburban theatre. A little sex is always present. Never spotlighting the new, he instead recombines pre-existing ideas with new application. His view of the world seems a chaotic one, shaped by accidents and chance. Figures, seemingly exposed on a colourful ground, watch from the paintings’ edges, looking at the events within the picture plane.

In his newest work, Salle develops a vast visual poetry. The disparate elements in an unruly visual culture dance pirouettes and endlessly twist and distort the possible breakthrough of distinct visual narratives. In order to avoid dizziness, viewers need the proper amount of self-will.

Editor: Frank-Thorsten Moll, Veit Görner, kestnergesellschaft Hannover
Authors: Alexandra von Stosch, Frank-Thorsten Moll, Isabell Goebel, Karen Lang, Rainer Crone, Veit Görner
Artists: David Salle

Softcover
31 x 24 cm
79 pages
28 color ills.
German/English
available
ISBN
28 Euro
2009