Must-See: Thomas Eggerer’s Exercise in Stillness

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition  

Central to Thomas Eggerer’s latest show at Capitain Petzel, ‘Galeria’, is a monumental new painting depicting the interior of a large gym in which figures stretch, jog, box and lift weights. The characters in Fitness (2024) are dispersed across the flat, wide-angled scene in such a way as to give compositional punctuation; limbs, extended at diagonals, direct the eye around the picture plane. Two joggers near the base of the work exercise together; the rest attend to their regimes alone. The viewer observes from above, at a vantage point higher than the neon strip lights that hang from the ceiling. The stillness of the scene contrasts starkly with the muscular activities on display.

Elsewhere, Eggerer employs bold colour and composition to heighten the formal thrust of a series of paintings depicting acts of protest. Despite this, works such as Stranded and High and Dry (both 2021) hint at the futility of these anonymous activists’ demonstrations: their placards and flags remain blank while recognizable corporate logos – The North Face, Rolling Rock, McDonalds – are visible on the clothing they wear and the products they consume. The overall impression is one of political ennui.

A number of the artist’s collages, including Floorgames (2018) and Aerobic Ballet (2022), are also on display. These works share the paintings’ penchant for combining formal picture-making with figures in a variety of activities, both athletic and leisurely. Yet, while the presence of a photographic source in these compositions allows for a greater breadth of texture, it is in the flatness of the paintings that Eggerer’s particular brand of ambiguity is most effective.

Uniting the works in ‘Galeria’ is a tension that occupies the gap between the calm pragmatism of the artist’s painterly application and the active (or activist) bodies he portrays. There is something back-to-front, though: it is the juiced-up colour in the negative spaces – rather than the characters depicted within them – that gives these works their thrumming physicality. Eggerer paints vivid tableaux of exercise and protest, but his figures are wan and weary, unsure what they’re training or marching for. At a time of discord, doubt is a powerful alternative.

Thomas Eggerer’s ‘Galeria’ is on view at Capitain Petzel, Berlin, until 21 December

_{Main image: Thomas Eggerer, Tanning, 2022, wallpaper, dimensions variable. Courtesy: the artist and Capitain Petzel, Berlin}