Radim Langer belongs to a group of painters who thematise painting itself. It is not only a matter of searching for regularities or justification of one’s own artistic approach, but rather of offering a commentary on the position of painting in cultural history, communication networks, within society, while simultaneously drawing the audience’s attention to their own perceptions and expectations. Thinking about painting involves references to its benefit and, at the same time, to the handicap of traditional media as well as its role in post-conceptual art and self-referential art strategies. Langer draws attention to the tension between painting work and its traditional symptoms like handicraft or originality, and technical elements in terms of subject matter and execution. The logic of this approach also includes the artist’s switching between creative disciplines such as literary activities or curating. The Abstract Machine exhibition is the result of his current re-evaluation of methodological and thought principles of working with painting – with a painted picture. Certain original inner motives and motivations, for example, purely practical examination of a painting in connection with the phenomena of work and mechanical manufacturing, or a reflection of the industrial dimension of the painting-object in today’s visual world, remain unchanged for the artist even though it is not necessary to search for them in contemporary pictures. Previous literality has disappeared, obvious thematisation has disappeared. The current approaches mix abstraction – realism – creating paintings as new realities, working out corporeality and deterritorialising an image based on the cartographic disintegration of the world, the disappearance of nature and one’s own autobiography.
The project was supported by funds from the Specific University Research scheme for 2019.
