Martina Steckholzer

Steckholzers Malerei ist eine offene Sammlung ästhetischer und inhaltlicher Interferenzen. Formen und Aussagen zeitgenössischer Kunstproduktion scheinen darin auf, fragmentiert und ihrem ursprünglichen Kontext entrissen. Aus vermuteten Referenzen und unbestimmten Erinnerungen entsteht ein Gefüge, das sich in steter Bewegung einer Orientierung verweigert. In dieses konzipierte Vakuum bricht die Malerei ein mit ihren subversiven Spezifika: Dinglichkeit und Aura, Präsenz und Autorschaft.

“…Steckholzer’s work is ‘conceptually abstract’, utilising – and perhaps inventing – a method of ‘abstraction’ that encompasses both the sensation produced by abstract painting, and an intellectual process. This conceptual abstraction locates the paintings within a wider economy of images through the technology of their production, a technology of the digital image. This technology of mechanical reproduction modulates the image as it moves through ever-new series of connections and contexts, opening it onto the world inasmuch as its conditions of existence are now shared with every other image (this is the insight of conceptual art Steckholzer embraces). But as we have seen, the abstract paintings that result obscure their original in the production of something new, and in this production of a sensation they return the circulating image to ‘art’ in perhaps its most traditional sense. This is finally the meaning of the déjà vu Steckholzer’s paintings produce, they are a memory (or copy) of an art work that has not, till now, existed.” (Stephen Zepke)

Martina Steckholzer