FLORIAN PUMHÖSL

The title ‘diminution’ is borrowed from musical composition theory where it designates the repetition and diminution of a motif. The introduction of ‘diminution’, or reduction as a compositional principle, into the history of painting, serves to demonstrate that the abstract portrait is a possibility by continuing to propose the contention that it is still feasible in the final estimate to make an individual or group portrait. ^*

In Florian Pumhösl’s adaptation this contention is adopted as a concept, although what concerns him is not so much the portrait as a category or any attempt to legitimise that category or innovate within it, but rather an approach to the ‘hazardous business’ of translation and the affective element involved in such translations. Each of the groups of 2 to 6 units, abstract under-glass paintings, are identical in format. ^** They are executed in acrylic lacquer and consist of simple arrangements of black curves and lines. These are mostly organised round a slightly tilted central axis which Florian Pumhösl understands as both a basic disposition in the logic of distribution, that is of a ‘presentation’ or as an angle of view of the constellation. Within the groups the painted configurations undergo variations or are developed back, this being done without applying any formal or mathematical logic, but rather with a general tendency to diminution, to a reduction in the size of the reproduction in which the abstraction seems to be more a means of transcription. This tendency can be read as intentionally unsystematic - both with regard to the materials and spatial qualities, and also to the understanding of history and the picture as quasi-economies.

Florian Pumhösl participated with his installation ‘Modernology’ at Documenta 12 in 2007 and also in the exhibition ‘Modernologies’ in the Museu d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona (MACBA). Currently a solo exhibition of the artist takes place at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf(until 24 May).

* As an example one might cite among others Bart van Leck’s formalistic portraits,Hans Richter’s Dada heads, or Marius de Zaya’s abstract caricatures, as well as Constantin Brancusi’s famous portrait of James Joyce.

** The vertical rectangle in the classical conventions of painting is the portrait format.