Artists

Philipp Timischl

Press release

An exhibition usually announces itself by asking to be entered. Philipp Timischl’s first exhibition with Sultana begins by complicating that invitation. Before properly entering the gallery, the viewer encounters a row of small paintings suspended on rusty chains across the entrance, like a loose barricade or a piece of institutional signage uncertain of its function.

Each work carries a version of the exhibition’s title, repeated six times in German, once in English, and once in French. In German, the phrase hovers between two readings: Ihnen, the formal “you,” addressing the visitor, and ihnen, “them,” possibly referring back to the paintings themselves. In French, “vous” preserves the formal address while remaining open to both an individual and a collective reading (L’exposition continue derrière vous). English also allows for singular and plural address, but loses both the formal register and the possible reading of “them.” Behind whom, then? Behind the paintings? Behind the visitor? Behind the visitors? Behind the gallery, out on the street? Rather than simply pointing elsewhere, the title destabilizes the viewer’s position, suggesting the exhibition may already have begun or may unfold beyond immediate reach. This ambiguity sets the tone for a show concerned with the conditions of looking: not only what is seen, but from where, how, and on what terms.

Across the gallery, Timischl presents a new series of floor-based sculptural works pairing paintings with screens. Positioned close to the wall, they are neither fully installed like conventional paintings nor entirely detached as objects. Each painting is accompanied by a video made by the artist of the painting itself, showing close-ups, angles, backsides, and surface details — fragments that might otherwise remain unnoticed. The screen becomes a substitute eye, allowing the viewer to watch how the artist looked.

The paintings are abstract, at time sparse, at times more active, but they do not insist on being fully resolved within themselves. They are allowed not to be fully self-sufficient. Beside the moving image, the painted surface has to become quieter. In contrast, the screens intensify attention through movement and repetition, translating the painting into another register. The exhibition thus stages painting as both object and image, both thing and documentation of itself. A painting may appear more available as footage than as matter — a subtle joke about attention, but also a serious proposition about contemporary visibility.

The works split the painting between its physical presence and the conditions under which it can actually be seen. Timischl’s titles extend this instability into language. Moving between German, French, and English, they often seem translated, mistranslated, or slightly off:

Das ältert schon / Ça s’âge déjà / It’s olding already;
 Man soll in Fragen des geistigen Eigentums nicht so pingelig sein / In matters of intellectual property, one should not be so particular;
 Well, I’d like to be a contemporary painting too;
 How on earth could you not become cynical as a painting;
 You are an artwork. How on earth can you be so unaware of your surroundings?

These sentences do not explain the works so much as give them a nervous inner life. The paintings seem to think, complain, or misread their situation.

What begins as a question of where the exhibition continues becomes one of where painting continues. It unfolds beside itself — on screens, in language, and through the shifting terms of its own visibility. Timischl treats painting as something whose visibility is always conditional. Exhibition continues behind you is thus not only a title but a proposition: painting remains present, but never entirely in one place.