On the occasion of Andreas Slominski’s one-man show in the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, a review appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung¹ in December 2006 that sought to do justice to the exhibition’s diverse objects and particularly went into the then-new Combine Paintings, works on extruded polystyrene. The article’s subheadings “Flooding the Cerebral Cortex” and “Hybrids Suspected of Kitsch” tellingly alluded to the imagery’s opulence and immediacy, as well as the crossover quality of Slominski’s approach. Bearing in mind that the artist’s means of expression include such plain utensils as live animal traps, one will come to interpret these framed pictures as “hybrids between painting, relief, color, and foam.” In addition, through the vehicle “of an ironical Postmodernism made of Styrofoam,” one is also reminded of the “foam-arisen mighty art market.”

The work xHBy94z in the evn collection, which dates from 2006 and forms part of this work group, is a perfect example of the technique of assembling distinctly legible signs, the combination of which rather confronts us with open questions than supplying a narrative answer. An oscillating whole emerges from the formal vigor of the colors and their relationship to the relief-like structures of drawing. This complex picture puzzle clearly counteracts a rapid consumption of the work’s content.

Paul Katzberger, 2011 (translation: Wolfgang Astelbauer)

1)  Thomas Wagner, “Vor Skifahrern wird gewarnt,” in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 20, 2006, 37.