MATTHIAS WEISCHER (B. 1973)

Included in the artist’s contemporaneous travelling retrospective Matthias Weischer: Malerei Painting, Matthias Weischer painting Hocker (Stool), 2007, depicts an artist’s studio frozen in time. Leaning against the pink walls are empty frames and half-finished canvases, and in the centre, is the titular stool in slate blue. The room is warm, and a propped-up landscape acts as a portal to the countryside. In 2007, Weischer received a fellowship from the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome, and the painting reflects the colour palettes of the medieval frescos that dot the city. The warm tones contribute to the overarching sense of nostalgia that saturates Hocker. In Weischer’s paintings, time plays an essential role, implicated in the nostalgic, dreamy interiors that are ‘suffused with the aura of epochs past and present’ (S. O’Reilly, ‘Review: Matthias Weischer’, Frieze, March 3, 2004). In accruing the room’s illusory memories, Hocker is redolent with the past lives of both the works within and the phantom artist himself.