The SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT presents a major solo exhibition of Frankfurt-based artist Thomas Bayrle (*1937). On view are 55 works, primarily from the past twenty years, including paintings and prints, sculptures and object-based works, as well as sound installations and a video piece.
In his art, Bayrle engages with fundamental aspects of modern society. How are religion and society, the individual and the mass, industrially manufactured products and the technical apparatuses of their production interconnected? Alongside the structures of consumption, urbanity, and technology, themes such as movement, pop and mass culture, and (substitute) religion play a key role. The artist explores popular works from art history—from Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Masaccio to Claude Monet—as well as the subject of labor.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Bayrle laid the innovative groundwork for his characteristic “superforms.” The repetition, connection, and interweaving of single elements into an overall image can be found in almost all of Bayrle’s works to this day and is closely linked to the artist’s biography.
Bayrle first trained as a machine weaver before turning to commercial and print graphics. The printing techniques he used there have informed his artistic practice both materially and conceptually, tracing the path from analog technique to today’s ubiquitous digitality. His works thus engage in a distinctive dialogue with the current exhibition venue of the SCHIRN—the industrial building of the former Dondorf printing house.
