TOBIAS LEHNER

The problem of beginning has always been of major concern for the history of ideas under many specific respects. At the incipit of the third chapter of his famous Difference and Repetition, philosopher Gilles Deleuze argues that every reflection begins with a sign which ‘perplexes’ the soul—which ‘forces it to pose a problem’. This is a perfectly appropriate remark for Lehner’s paintings if one takes time to engage with his hyper-rich, cosmogonic language. Layer by layer (his artworks count between 15 and 20), he burdens the canvas with shifting, fusional/conflicting strata of high-speed strokes, pensive spots, loops and dribbles, which compose either black-and-white or colour galaxies without going back to objects in the slightest. Mazes of signs with no objectual reference are of course problematic. They can only be ‘sensed’. Why, however, is this a beginning? When asked about his decision to embrace abstractionism, in contrast to the figurative tradition that characterises the Leipzig School, Lehner answers with disarming simplicity: ‘It was more an emotional choice rather than a matter of reasons’. What now if he wanted to imply that every beginning as such is emotional? Emotions: here’s where the whole universe of meanings and things is involved in its emergence. Emotions: that’s what he’s devoted to. ‘In the beginning was not the Word’, we might be tempted to say. Lehner’s problematic signs, while resisting the seduction to be objectified into a reasonable narration, hint exactly at the emotional limit whereby every narration is generated as such.

Break up, begin is a face-to-face encounter with Lehner’s emotional practice of beginning and re-beginning. Recently, the artist has come to make a clean break with his past and reject any claim for order he asserted through the rigorous geometrical lines and shapes which served as the very framework of his former paintings. His new paintings, rich in smoother contrasts, audacious balances and perspectives, seem to make clear he definitely embraced a joyful apology of indefinite chaos. “I came to discover anarchy makes its own harmony”, admits Lehner. He has made himself a connoisseur of the secret grammatic which springs directly from the inner materiality of things, rather than from the abstract prescription of a law. At the same time, he warns us against the idea that chaos might bypass technical expertise by virtue of its insensitivity to geometric laws. Lehner’s compositional confidence is at its fullest. He just does no longer need grids or geometric guidelines to construct optically compelling visual effects. He has learnt to skilfully play with natural light instead, in order to create translucencies between layers which ensure his new compositions with incredible depth of field. He has no doubt, anyway, that restoring a certain notion of spatial perspective could make the new chapter in contemporary abstract art history.

Break up, begin displays Lehner’s relationship to his past as a process of artistic and existential liberation. The show articulates a dialogue which reflects Lehner’s approach to time and evolution. His new, stunningly chaotic artworks communicate in the background—‘im Hinterkopf’, he likes to emphasise—with little pure geometric compositions he realises with stripe residual materials from his old canvases. Just as when dealing with demons haunting from one’s past self, there could be no evolution but involving a twofold work of disruption and conservation. As a matter of fact, Lehner knows past is never to be surpassed if one doesn’t preserve a minimum of conversation with it in the present. Only dialogue allows previous experiences to truly be perceived as having passed. In his own words, he wouldn’t be able to venture in the vertiginous realm of chaos without turning back to his ‘old chains’ to understand, relocate, downscale them where they can’t menace him anymore and eventually break free. He is perfectly aware of what is gone and what remains. His conversations are there to prove he is not afraid of demons. Chaos can begin at last.