Group exhibition And When I See A Ghost I Really See A Ghost

– Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman Wien, curated by_vienna 2025, Fragmented Subjectivity

Hardly any other medium in art history has been so closely tied to the notion of individual authorship as painting. It is regarded as the paradigmatic form of creative subjectivity – a medium in direct physical connection with the producer: the brushstroke as signature of the body, the surface as psychological resonance space. This entanglement of action, materiality, and authorship is constitutive for the Western idea of the artistic genius.

The exhibition And When I See A Ghost I Really See A Ghost questions and decenters this notion. The artists on view do not treat painting as a self-contained object but as a relational field – a processual formation in which subjectivity, materiality, and space become unstable and permeable. Instead of unified authorship, what emerges is a fragmented, shared, at times indeterminate structure of artistic production. The artwork is no longer understood as the manifestation of an autonomous subject, but as an interface between economic, ethical, social, and aesthetic parameters.
KAYA (Kerstin Braetsch & Debo Eilers), KAYA Pelle / Davide, 2018, leather, oil paint, mix media, epoxy, aluminium, belts, 283 × 165 × 48 cm; © Daniele Molajoli, Courtesy the artists and Deborah Schamoni
MARIA VMIER, Das Ende des Kapitalismus [mit LJ Jeschke], 2024, ink, pigment, acrylic, oil pastel, charcoal on perforated paper (2 panels), 270 x 365 cm; Courtesy the artist & Deborah Schamoni
ARI PILHOFER, A.K.N.F.: Baphomet, 2025, aquarelle and acrylic on paper, tension belt, glazed ceramic element, 150 x 120 cm; © Lukas Ulrich

The German term and concept of “position” here functions deliberately as a counter-model to the idea of a coherent artist-subject. It marks an attitude within a discursive field without essentializing it biographically or stylistically. The practices involved operate with an expanded form of painting that not only exceeds the boundaries of the canvas but also subverts institutional and medial conventions. The picture plane itself becomes a subject, extending into the exhibition space, while the artwork becomes a site of shared subjectivities.

These strategies do not only negotiate questions of aesthetic form but fundamentally address the status of the artwork in a present where production and reception can no longer be understood as separate, but rather as circular movements. Painting appears here not as an autonomous language but as a fluid structure within which authorship, materiality, and meaning are continually reconfigured. ↱ read more

Monika Bayer-Wermuth

[Quelle: EInladung]

KAYA, Ari Pilhofer, Maria VMier

Objects

(Archival material, Publications)

2025 Geisterhafte Gemeinschaftlichkeit (Text)
2025 Ausstellungsinformation: And When I See A Ghost I Really See A Ghost (Archival object)
2025 Einladung: And When I See A Ghost I Really See A Ghost (Archival object)