David Schiesser‘s practice plays with the relationship between drawing and painting in a very interesting way. In the past, he used mostly coal on canvas, and though colors have now entered his practice, pieces such as „die verkürzte Reise der Aale“ could still be considered drawings. In the new works in this exhibition, coal is replaced by oil, bringing this conflation of drawing and painting to a final marriage. Paint-drawing. Draw-painting. And it is this conflation, this collusion of drawing and painting, what I believe that often enables him to bring such strong narrative force to the canvas, despite the presence of what one could call still lifes, as in „Flunder und Zitronen (geschält)“, present in this exhibition, with its typical elements of art depicting inanimate subject matter and the human-made aspects of domestic life.

But it is in paintings such as „Sagres“ or „Hört auf zu malen wir brauchen mehr Facharbeiter“, that one sees the presence of narrative elements. These elements however are not drawn from static History, as in the old paintings of big war battles, where the narrative is known and given beforehand. This story-telling in David Schiesser‘s work seems to happen outside or above History, and it is often difficult to distinguish if it presents a utopian or dystopian nature. Is it the beginning or the end? Is it an edenic or apocalyptic depiction of human life? In several paintings, the intrusion of contemporary elements will place the work in our own between-the-beginning-and-the-end, when the most peaceful scenery becomes contaminated by marketing logos, such as the IKEA sign in „Compost“, in a criticism towards our very use of nature and destruction of forests for furniture. This hasn‘t changed in many centuries, uniting our beginning and our end. The very sign becomes a human figure.

For this entire discussion, I feel „Sagres“ is a central piece in this exhibition because the relationship between drawing and painting is clear here. It also has strong narrative elements. Let us consider the painting. A fisherman walks into the night, here presented in pitch black oil. Is it a man from the beginning of culture, a prehistoric man, or a survivor of a nuclear catastrophe? It is open to the viewer, and I believe different viewers will apply their mood to the canvas. The title, of course, can drive the narrative. Sagres is a village in Portugal, famous for being near the Western end of the world‘s longest estimated straight-line path over land, at a distance of 11,241 km, with its Eastern end close to Jinjiang in the People‘s Republic of China. For a conversation of the relationship between Europe and the post-colonial world of the Americas, this is usually presented as the place where Europe jumped the Ocean to become what some still call the New World. A beginning. An end.

The fish becomes an important symbol for beginnings and ends in David Schiesser‘s work. We have all inherited the world from a fish. That first fish that dragged itself out of the waters. The symbology of the fish has been overwritten by Christianity, but it remains a strong element of survival in a world that overfishes to feed its growing population. But at our beginning, there was a fish. As the waters rise in the coming decades and centuries due to global warming, we might come face to face, more and more, with this creature, our ancestor.

RICARDO DOMENECK