Few artists achieve work of such consistent tension. It is as if a flaming torch were passed on from series to series. Or as if skin were stretched particularly tightly over the bones of each canvas. It is a tension which has developed exclusively from the painterly postulates which Monika Baer has increasingly unfolded over the past thirty years. Without compromise Baer has thus created a body of work which flows free from all currents. Baer’s visual language appears timeless while also being strongly connected to the present. Sauntering, dialectic movements create a charged vibration and also characterise the internal correlations of the paintings.
Defection presents Baer’s most recent works. They are shown in proximity to the previously developed motivic group of coats which have been left behind on ledges or in crevices. Both complexes negotiate shallow space, with the underlying dimension remaining closed and enigmatic. The eye scanning its obsessive detail can pick up a trail, but cannot pursue it to the end.
Image credit: Monika Baer, Schweine Steine Scherben (smoking), 2025, detail. Courtesy of the artist and Trautwein Herleth, Berlin, Greene Naftali, New York. Photo: Júlia Standovár
