Building Walls

In 1992, Klaus Merkel began with an index. For each of his previous exhibitions, he painted miniatures of the works shown onto a new canvas. Merkel adapted the administrative practice of inventorying and created for himself a system of image-finding that outwitted the tiresome activism of creativity. More than that: the Freiburg-based artist (*1953) had found a way to escape “the” discourse. I am referring to that well-oiled machine of themes, interests, fashions, and jargon that sets the pace for what is contemporary in contemporary art. Merkel was able to calmly set it aside while, image by image (problem by problem), he found his own rhythm. His own fellowship with time.

Sometime around 2009, an art student in Hamburg got hold of a catalogue from an exhibition. The exhibition was called The Most Contemporary Picture Show, Actually, and the student was Christian Rothmaler (*1982). During the years of the last major art boom, it must have seemed quite adventurous to operate against the contemporary rhythm. But The Most Contemporary Picture Show, Actually (November 2006 to January 2007 at the Kunsthalle Nürnberg) not only allowed itself an ironic title; the exhibition dispensed with any thesis that could be exploited discursively. Instead, it presented an open field of painterly references and distinctions among the works of the three participating artists: Michael Krebber, René Daniëls—and Klaus Merkel. The fact that entirely new walls were built in the Kunsthalle for this purpose struck the student as almost theatrical, and one can sense his enthusiasm when he recounts how lastingly this exhibition catalogue influenced him. After all, during those years he had begun his own self-referential game with peculiar symbols and formal elements. Christian Rothmaler, too, eventually escaped “the” discourse—in a double sense.

This is not about two reclusive painters who withdraw into solitude in their studios far from Berlin. On the contrary: what I am trying to describe is how artistic discourses find their paths—in the narrow crevices between images, texts, nearly forgotten exhibitions, and long out-of-print catalogues—despite everything. And how such a discourse can assert itself against what we take to be “the” discourse, “the” contemporary, or “the” present. Namely, when we no longer read texts or see exhibitions, but scan them. We scan them for more of the same, like the notorious algorithms that make us addicted or at least lead us to believe that curiosity is срод to convenience. Those who become too comfortable, or addicted to “the” present, realize too late when it has already passed. Ever since people began speaking of that ominous “vibe shift”—that as yet undefined yet undisputed смена of the cultural zeitgeist—many seem to be afraid of it.

It will not be the fear of artists like Merkel or Rothmaler, who in any case integrate into “the” present only to a limited extent, because they have long since opened up time on their own terms. The philosopher Christoph Paret recently contrasted, in an essay for Lettre International, the concept of inclusion with the secessionist principle of the avant-gardes: the avant-gardes did not need to be included—because they did not want to be. Instead of making themselves dependent on those who grant access to institutions, their institution first had to be founded. For me, Merkel and Rothmaler are comrades of the same secession. Without ever having met in person, their images are already in conversation. I also believe that they are already in excellent dialogue with the paintings of Stella Sieber (*1992), the sculptures of Peter Wächtler (*1979) and Mara Wohnhaas (*1997), and the photographs of Nicolas Rausch (*1998). Because all of their works succeed, in very similar ways, in building walls. Not literally in space, but within the work—walls that seem to shield the artists from certain impositions of the contemporary without closing themselves off from the present itself. What they share is a compositional clarity that has nothing of severity or mechanical precision; a formal execution that is legible and yet not fully penetrable. Their walls have doors, but they make one thing clear right at the entrance: we will not be occupied or conquered by anyone.

In “the” discourse of recent years, there has often been talk of contemporary art that “tears down walls” and “opens itself” to the world, to society, pop culture, politics, and the major questions of justice. Perhaps in doing so, people have underestimated which interests ultimately prove stronger—and that good art itself is a minority that may be better advised, in case of doubt, to adopt the strategy of secession rather than full inclusion into the existing order. In other words: every image, every work, and every oeuvre does well to build its own four walls—and enough back doors through which one may enter when its main entrance is besieged by vested interests.

Langenhagen, March 2026
Steffen Zillig