Jan Zöller / Wherever You Go, There You Are
22 March–4 May 2024
Meyer Riegger
Klauprechtstraße 22, 76137 Karlsruhe
Jan Zöller The scenery of forlornness, 2021 2024 watercolor and pencil on paper (framed), charcoal on canvas, stainless steel 247 x 409 cm. Courtesy of Meyer Riegger , Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller Mirror structures, 2024 acrylic, oil, stain, pastel, ink and charcoal on canvas 250 x 200 cm . Courtesy of Meyer Riegger , Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Wherever we go there we are, 2024, acrylic, oil, stain, pastel, ink and charcoal on canvas, 250 x 200 cm . Courtesy of Meyer Riegger , Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Nothing ends that didn’t start, 2024, acrylic, oil, stain, pastel, ink and charcoal on canvas, 250 x 200 cm . Courtesy of Meyer Riegger , Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Sweet instability, 2024 acrylic, oilstick, pastel and charcoal on canvas 80 x 120 cm. Courtesy of Meyer Riegger , Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Wherever we go, there we are, 2024 acrylic, oilstick, stain, pastel and charcoal on canvas 80 x 120 cm. Courtesy of Meyer Riegger , Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Antistress for babies and families, 2024, acrylic, oilstick, stain, pastel and charcoal on canvas 80 x 120 cm. Courtesy of Meyer Riegger, Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Everything beautiful is an illusion, 2024 acrylic, oilstick, stain, pastel and charcoal on canvas 80 x 120 cm . Courtesy of Meyer Riegger, Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
Jan Zöller, Something that’s beautiful but shattered, 2024 charcoal and pastel on canvas 200 x 140 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Meyer Riegger,Berlin/Karlsruhe/Basel
As the sun sets in Rome in late autumn, the sky is often filled with vast veils
resembling small tornadoes. Swarms of starlings rush through the air, contracting and
expanding, appearing light grey at first and then pitch black. No matter how much of a
hurry you are in, their haunting choreography forces you to stop and look up at the
sky. The birds only pay attention to the movements of their immediate neighbours; the
bigger picture emerges almost of its own accord.
Birds, reduced to their simplest form, also populate Jan Zöller’s paintings. They are
often wearing trousers and shoes, sometimes carrying tools, and recently branches
and other natural elements, sometimes they even have arms, too. Yet, at other times
these human attributes are simply flying through the air somewhere in the image –
already on their way somewhere else. Neither the minimalism nor the vivid colours of
Zöller’s paintings have anything to do with these romantic evenings in Rome, but the
murmurations of starlings raise questions that his works also confront us with: how is
it possible to enter into collective movement? How do so many small decisions and
impulses result in a temporary togetherness – and how fragile is it?
Upon entering the Meyer Riegger gallery, where Zöller’s exhibition Wherever You Go,
There You Are will be on display from 22 March to 4 May 2024, railings with debris
scattered around them and a sound installation suggest that something must have
happened here not so long ago – an event that left behind these traces and in which
the performers physically explored the problem of the balance between individual and
collective movement.
The birds that appear in Zöller’s paintings as representatives of certain types, neither
animal nor human, and the trouser legs that always seem to be on their way
somewhere are occasionally reminiscent of the role played by the hooded heads in
Philip Guston’s paintings – and disembodied legs, shoes and watches appear in the
works of both. The birds’ pointed, triangular beaks recall the constructivist works of
the Russian avant-garde. Indeed, Zöller knows how to position his work in the canon,
alongside Kippenberger, Förg and Lasker, to name just a few examples – although this
is not a singular, isolated act of positioning, but rather the continuation of a common
idea, a kind of communication across generations. Like the starlings in the skies of
Rome, Zöller’s paintings are about paying attention and relating to one another. Each
small movement changes the bigger picture.
In the new large-format paintings that Zöller is now showing for the first time at Meyer
Riegger, the artist pushes his motifs further towards abstraction. Individual trouser
legs even become completely abstract planes. He paints over charcoal drawings with
wood stain, blurring the foreground and background. Zöller also uses oil paints for the
first time. This gestural experimentation with paint results in figures simultaneously
appearing and disappearing in the image: there are supporting elements on which
Zöller makes his figures appear and move, balancing objects on which his figures
come to life, make decisions and, with tools or twigs in their arms, search for and
hesitantly tread new paths – because there are seemingly a number of other potential
directions to choose. And then there are the overpainted, transparent, doubled and
even superimposed motifs, as well as the dynamic, rippling lines that resemble chaotic
brainwaves or knotted shoelaces, which Zöller uses to shift the figurative into the
abstract. The figures, lines and colours pull and push against each other, and in this
back and forth, in this space between letting go and holding on, the image emerges as
a precarious, collective unity.
Even in Zöller’s earlier works, elbows and trouser legs hastily rush through the picture.
Still here, you should be somewhere else by now. This staggering and stumbling
causes different temporal planes to overlap in his paintings. Past, present and future
merge together. Still here, you should have been somewhere else by now. In the new
large-format works, this sense of being impelled reaches a new climax, becomes more
existential. The urgency is no longer between the figures, it is within the figures
themselves and simultaneously vibrates throughout the entire image space.
What happens when the equilibrium of this temporary “we” collapses?
We will have been together.
Alicja Schindler