Thomas Scheibitz

Previous owner: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Collection Blake Byrne, 2002
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Artcurial, Paris, 2017

Is this a tyre rolling toward the sea at night?
In 101 – 2002, the forms resist unambiguous readings and, as the artist puts it, always remain ‘on the edge of invention’ [1]: ‘I can’t think up anything that would really be new – that’s impossible. It’s just that one also needs a dimension located between contemplation and memory. […] If I see the dictaphone here, for example, as a box – and perhaps also the mudguard of a car which maybe has a similar shape comes to mind at the same moment, in a kind of déjà vu effect – then it becomes an idea in the sketchbook, which will then maybe become a sculpture.’ [2]

The paintings by Thomas Scheibitz (born 1968) juggle with abstraction by seeking a balance between the well-known and invention. He draws his forms from the real, visible world. To this end, he has created an archive in which he collects forms ranging from newspaper clippings to playing cards. It serves him as a basis for paintings or sculptures, which he prepares in sketchbooks. The fact that the painted object is not to be equated with the real object, but always only refers to it, ultimately therefore the painted has its own independent reality, is central for Scheibitz.

He studied at the Dresden Academy in the 1990s where classical painting traditions were held in high regard. The delicate surfaces of his paintings demonstrate the extent to which he employs traditional painting techniques while seeking to develop them further, driven by a fascination for the materiality of objects – in his own ‘object’, his painting, this plays a significant role. The paint is applied in such a way that the surface of the canvas develops a silky finish, a structure which is meant to feel similar to skin. Not only that which appears on the canvas is permitted its own autonomy, but the canvas also becomes an object for Scheibitz.

This is how Scheibitz works on his own system of signs, full of semi-abstract allusions, in order to use them to call up figures, objects or scenes, while at the same time keeping their interpretation open. Painting here is a tightrope walk along what can no longer be grasped with terms such as abstract and figurative. This process of coding and decoding is not comprehensible to the viewer, but for Scheibitz it is by no means arbitrary. His aim is ‘that a picture is as precise as possible with the greatest possible generality. So, that I bring in nothing narrative, nothing photographic, nothing realistic, but that it remains a probably exact, but nevertheless general form.’ [3]

[1] Stephan Berg: ‘The Blade Runner,’ in: Thomas Scheibitz: Masterplankino, ed. by Stephan Berg and René Zechlin, ex. cat. Kunstmuseum Bonn, Wilhelm Hack Museum, Cologne [2018], pp. 37-44, here p. 37.
[2] Thomas Scheibitz in conversation with Isabelle Graw, in: One-Time Pad, ed. by Susanne Gaensheimer, ex. cat. MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Cologne 2012, pp. 53–65, here pp. 55f.
[3] Thomas Scheibitz in interview with Maarten Bertheux, in: Bannister Diamond, ed. by Marteen Bertheux, ex. cat. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2001, pp. 11–23, here p. 13.