Dead Man
Alois Mosbacher
oil on canvas
100 × 139 cm
2002
Acquisition 2003
Inv. No. 0128
The “walkers” belong to the most extensive work group centred on the theme “forest”: the forest as domain for outsiders, adventurers and drop-outs. Internet research on “Life Action Role Plays” provided the incentive for a series in which Mosbacher tests out the narrative potential of painting and at the same time focuses his attention on asking medium immanent questions. Found material and his own photographs go through a sounding-out and selection process in order to be placed in new configurations of meaning in the form of paintings or drawings. So it is completely unclear whether the “walker” in the picture is happily striding along and in the second, simply lying in the sun, or whether he is the victim of a crime. Mosbacher presents his cryptic stories in an almost triumphant style of painting which, with its dynamic openness between abstraction and figuration, insists on an unequalled sovereignty.
Brigitte Huck, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
Wallpaper #4, evn sammlung, Maria Enzersdorf, 2020
Nach Rokytník. The collection of EVN, MUMOK, Vienna, 2005
Out there. Alois Mosbacher, 2004
Publications
Wallpaper #4, Vienna 2021, p. 26 ff (s. p.)
Alois Mosbacher [on the occasion of the exhibition “Alois Mosbacher. Out there”, 1.5. – 20.6.2004, Secession Vienna], Vienna 2004, p. 7