Maureen Paley is pleased to present new paintings and sculptures in a solo exhibition by Michaela Eichwald at Morena di Luna in Hove.

‘Michaela Eichwald began her career as part of the vibrant painting scene in Cologne during the early 1990s. Now a resident of Berlin, she continues to work in a style informed by the Cologne scene’s culture of individualism and nonconformity.'

'Her formal language of gestural abstraction with its often muddy palette and messy, roughly textured surfaces echoes European Art lnformel painting of the 1950s, but her use of unconventional materials such as pleather instead of canvas is utterly contemporary. Her paintings can be monumental or intimate in scale, and often combine multiple mediums. including oil, acrylic, and lacquer, on inexpensive supports such as pre-primed canvas or the aforementioned fake leather.'

'Eichwald rejects preciousness, and her process sometimes includes exposing works to the elements. where they accumulate dirt and wear. In some paintings, faces and other narrative elements emerge from the brushstrokes. While her paintings also bear stylistic commonalities with the bold gestures of 1980s Neo-Expressionism, she has no interest in that period’s heroic stance, as evidenced by the visceral and base qualities of her colours and marks.'

'In recent years. Eichwald’s paintings have grown in scale to include long murals that may incorporate collaged elements of photography and text, while her tabletop sculptures extend her evocative objects into three dimensions. Made by suspending small bits of found materials including food scraps, bits of metal, and trash in resin-filled plastic gloves and bags they are simultaneously repellent and beautiful. In both paintings and sculptures, Eichwald’s works are in a category of their own and suggest layers of private narrative that intentionally elude definitive explication.’

MoMA, The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Laura Hoptman, 2014, p.89

Michaela Eichwald lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Selected solo exhibitions include SEID IHR DOOF ODER WAS?!???!, Works from 20 Years, Kunstverein Schwerin, Schwerin, Germany (2018); Gesellschaft III. Die Bamberger Kondition unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Auslegung allen Geschehensn, Villa Concordia, Bamberg, Germany (2015); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2014); Total Awareness Of All Dimensions (Dimensions Variable), Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2009).

Selected group exhibitions include Ungestalt, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2017), Painting 2.0, Mumok, Vienna (2016), Raw And Delirious, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Off Broadway, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, USA; The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, MoMA, NY, USA (2015); the 8th Berlin Biennale, Germany (2014); Painting Forever, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany, and Some End of Things, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland (2013).