Monique van Genderen & Marcel Eichner speak on 'Bad Painting'

Oolong Gallery presents an Artist Talk Event Sunday January 12 at 2pm; a 25 minute drive from La Jolla and North County well worth it.

A closing event is set for this major exhibition of eleven large paintings plus new medium scale works on board. Expect discourse, a slideshow, non alcoholic beverages on campus, and surprise music to end this short-lived Kunsthalle type exhibition. Marcel Eichner is the first Oolong artist in residence in San Diego, and his showcase will continue the following weekend with an addendum presentation at Oolong over two weeks. Special thanks goes to Southwestern College Art Gallery director & artist Nikko Mueller for enabling this collaboration. The historic Breuer building homage SWC Art Gallery, founded by artist Bob Matheny in 1969, is at risk of being torn down. Baldessari himself began showing and teaching at this college. Part of the aim here is to help save it or find other solutions, while also staging a grand display of paintings in dialog with the iconic brutalist ceiling, as well as Mayan influenced modernist campus architecture.

View the exhibition in person.

SWC Art Gallery and its History

900 Otay Lakes Rd 88 101, Chula Vista, CA 91910

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Installation view of 'On a knife's edge' by Marcel Eichner at SWC Art Gallery (image: Philipp Scholz Rittermann)

Next weekend Quint Gallery also presents Monique van Genderen's exhibition closing January 18 at 1pm, The Sea Ranch, 2024: Some paintings, a photograph, a film and a poem. Van Genderen and poet Jennifer Moxley will discuss the exhibition's titular painting, followed by a poetry reading from Moxley.

Monique van Genderen received her MFA from CalArts, Valencia, CA and her BFA from UC San Diego. She has presented solo exhibitions most recently at Galerie Richard, Paris, France; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Bernier/Eliades, Brussels; Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin; Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA; Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig; TAI Modern, Santa Fe, NM; and Galleri Brandstrup, Oslo. Her work may be found in numerous international collections including the Albertina Museum, Vienna; the Eileen Harris and Peter Norton Family Foundation, Santa Monica, CA; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain; Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Montblanc Cutting Edge Art Collection, Hamburg, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and MCA San Diego. She has received a Project Commission for Murals for La Jolla; the Chiaro Award at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; Federal Courthouse Building Art Commission for the GSA, Arts and Architecture Program, Harrisburg, PA; and the West Hollywood 1% for the Arts Public Art Commission. In 2006, van Genderen was shortlisted for the Castellón County Council III International Painting Prize, Castellón, Spain and, in 2004, was an Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. Van Genderen lives between San Diego and Los Angeles, and is the Chair of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego.

Marcel Eichner was born in 1977, in Siegburg, Germany. From 1998 to 2004 he studied at the Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, under Professor Jorg Immendorff, and now lives and works in Berlin.

"There are artists who demonstrate early in life an uncanny feeling for the fluid wanderings of a drawn line which directs their imagination and intimate dreams. Eichner’s line meanders on the canvas, creating as it passes fragile personages and grotesque creatures, and when it rests there is a world filled with nightmarish scenes and mad demons. Fortunately, a glimmer of humor within these complex, imaginative compositions gives us a reprieve from the chaos and intensity within.

It does not feel like a rational, organized universe, but rather one in which everything is in freefall; perspective, scale, objects with an almost manic force running the show. However, the composition and line keep everything under control and balance within the canvases. There are echoes of Grosz, Klee, Ensor. Evidence of psychological revelations in painting are more in keeping with a 20th century European tradition of analysis, but in this respect Eichner has a connection to Jackson Pollack’s intuitive search for form and line to express his subconscious feelings. Eichner’s paintings have a powerful abstract presence, with a refined sense of color and line, creating a web of intriguing content on a mysterious stage."

— David McKee (2013), Eichner and early Guston dealer in NY 1974-2015

Recent Eichner solo exhibitions include:

2022 Marcel Eichner: Neue Bilder, CFA, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany

2021 “W”, Haverkampf Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2020 Me, Haverkampf Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2019 Paintings and Drawings 2009-2019, Cassina Projects, Milan, Italy

2017 Good Enough, Haverkampf Gallery, Berlin, Germany Point Blank, James Fuentes, New York, USA

2015 Marcel Eichner, James Fuentes, New York, USA

2014 McKee Gallery, New York, USA Akt mit vier Beinen, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany

2013 McKee Gallery, New York, USA Die Villa Schöningen Bilder, Villa Schöningen, Potsdam, Germany

2012 Marcel Eichner, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany

2010 8x Elmer, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany.

Translated from German, Nicole Hackert in the CFA catalog Marcel Eichner '8 x Elmer' :

"Indeed, many of his paintings exude a claustrophobic atmosphere. The Cast of these paintings is often a little too large or oversized for the pictorial space. Often they are in the midst of movement, alone or together, that might cause them to hit their heads at the edge of the painting, or to scrape their knee.

Spaces: If we attempt to describe the picture in a classical manner, we find ourselves asking where exactly these freaks on Marcel Eichner’s paintings are frolicking. From time to time, attributes like doors or windows signal that they are located inside, in a room. But this illusionary space is destroyed by creatures that seem to break through the walls and the ceiling and suddenly present their grotesque faces to us. Then again, there are scenes that in terms of the paintings’ structure suggest that they take place outside. Extreme size differences between the protagonists indicate an exterior space in terms of perspective, where the larger figures would have to be located in the foreground, and the smaller one further back. But then the artist includes a detail that would situate the setting in an interior space — for example, a ceiling lamp — and then nothing is right anymore as far as perspective is concerned. Eichner couldn’t care less about spatial perspective and illusion, he is interested in pictorial spaces. This becomes evident when Eichner has one figure, a “Zorro” type, walk along the edges of a canvas.

I ask the artist how he begins. He tells me he first pours paint and ink on the canvas — sometimes consciously, sometimes accidentally. And then he lets the painting do its thing. Depending on whatever the painting has done, Eichner then intervenes in the process. The figures are given contours in ink, or scratched into the acrylic paint, i.e. they are more drawn than painted, and thus they seem like ciphers for things human or animal. They are not modeled, but remain rather flat, without volume and without the reassurance of anatomical correctness — which he actually frowns upon. Looking at photographs or images of other artists is anyway forbidden while he paints. It has to be done quickly, hence ink or acrylic paint and not oils. Sometimes the painting overtakes the artist, the figures practically invent or paint themselves, start to interact, and force spontaneous reactions. Then a compositional intervention on the part of the painter takes place, which gives the figures a new orientation and allows them to pursue new activities.

That sounds almost a little like slapstick — along the lines of “it paints”, or “higher beings command”. Eichner also has to put up with the oft-quoted kitsch about “the fight with the canvas”. Because when you see the paintings and listen to the artist speak about them, you actually do get the notion that somebody orchestrates or mediates between powers over which he has only limited influence. Giving up control and tripping himself up from time to time in the painting process, so that things stay exciting, that is after all his motto. Hence the right-handed artist sometimes also paints using his left hand."

Oolong Gallery

6030 La Flecha, Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067

Telephone +1 858 229 2788 Mobile +1 917 340 0877

www.oolongallery.com