Digital image storage opens up a new world for Gerhard Kaiser. Everything is an image, everything is infinite and the images are perpetual. He compresses the image data, superimposes it, bends and alters it and kneads it all digitally before printing it on Plexiglas, paper and canvas in specific organisation systems. In other words, he takes the path of addition. In the case of canvases, a painterly intervention is often added, as shown in the REUSED painting at the current exhibition. (Peter Liaunig)
The artist abstracts into the small and the large. The closer you get to an image and the further you move away from it, the more abstract it becomes.
In many respects Gerhard Kaiser’s works are a game of levels because, in addition to the switch between writing and image, abstraction and representation, enlargement and diminution, a further ambiguity runs through the works. Frequently one or more frames containing pictures make their appearance. Picture-in-picture has the function of emphasising something, accenting it, pointing it out. In the context of Kaiser’s works, which work with the stream of images, it appears to be a method of arresting the images and making them tangible, of putting a stop to the visual overload. A. Warhol, R. Rauschenberg, G. Richter and others have drawn attention to individual media images. But the presence of the image has changed since Pop Art’s beginnings which were so intensively concerned with the issue. This has only increased in the wake of on-going digital developments. Western societies are subjected to a continuous flood of images and have to find a way of dealing with that. Gerhard Kaiser consciously engages with this flood of pictures and counteracts them with abstractions that develop their own visual laws. (Nina Schedlmayer)
Gerhard Kaiser, 1955 born in Bad Vöslau and works in Enzesfeld-Lindabrunn, Lower Austria. 1975-1980 Studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Master class for painting and graphics, Prof. Oswald Oberhuber. Since 1976 numerous domestic and international exhibitions. Works can be found in important museums and private collections, including: Albertina Museum, Vienna; Belvedere 21, Vienna, Museum Liaunig, Neuhaus; State Collections of Lower, Austria; University of Applied Arts, Vienna; Cultural Office of the City of Vienna; Peter Liaunig Collection, Vienna; South Bohemian Gallery, Budweis; Kraus Collection, Chicago, US; Hodin Collection, London, UK; Urban Collection, Waidhofen/Ybbs; Oberhuber Collection, Vienna; Rychlik Collection, Bad Vöslau; Hummel Collection, Vienna; Brunmair Collection, Vienna; Hofians Collection, Baden.
