Thomas von Poschinger at Loggia

Artist: Thomas von Poschinger

Exhibition title: COURT

Venue: Loggia, Munich, Germany

Date: July 8 – August 31, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Loggia, Munich

Colour-coordinated from his sweatband to his shoes in an original combo of fluorescent bike pants and snug denim shorts, Andre Agassi – eccentric, exceptional talent, tennis pop star and subsequent legend – swept over the court and through the media for more than three decades. With the best return of all time and a forehand/backhand combination that remains unrivalled today, he won everything there was to win in tennis.

Thomas von Poschinger’s exhibition COURT can be read as a homage – to Agassi, but also to the art of tennis. On closer inspection, surprising analogies emerge between the art of athletic ball-play and the fine arts – a rapport that the artist pursues in terms of both content and form.

In his most recent paintings, Poschinger juxtaposes large colour fields with tennis players. Magazine cut outs of the players – serving, in triumphant joy or exiting the court – presented on rich, luminous colours set the scene. Thomas von Poschinger enters alongside them. Whereas the players score with efficient strokes, the artist determines compositions with his targeted interventions. The painting style differs from the vivid brushwork of earlier series – including Insular State 2018 and Stars 2016 – which are characterized by speed and spontaneity. Previously worked canvases are often over-painted and pastose brush strokes from earlier motifs and encrusted blobs of paint shine through subtly, lending the paintings a markedly haptic impression. Whether the compositions are based on paint poured dynamically yet with control onto the surface, or on colour fields, the paintings radiate calm but for the pop-up portraits of athletes. It is an interplay that triggers tactile stimuli and affords the works lightness. Ultimately, the pieces in the series are often flirting with the shape of the tennis court itself. There is no question of differentiation between foreground and background, instead it’s a quick match on a level playing field.

The artist processes his subjects within series using painting, photography and combinations of the two under a singular heading, which he then resolves into a final exhibition. As Poschinger develops several works in parallel, the initially completed canvases remain within reach, so that the working process can always be reignited. In dialogue with the finished works, he increasingly condenses the overriding theme.

Tennis may be dear to his heart, but his focus leans towards the parallels to life as an artist. Both tennis and the art world are determined by rules and codes. The ambiguity of the exhibition title COURT – referring in part to the sports ground of tennis as well as the royal court – alludes to the two disciplines as hermetic or regulated systems. Generally speaking, it is endurance, the honing of certain skills, and doubt as well as failure, which forge the path to success for both tennis players and artists. Both are aligned in the ambivalent fate of working in solitude on the one hand, and occasionally appearing in public on the other. And hence, Thomas von Poschinger’s players usually contend alone on the field, simultaneously exalted by and at the mercy of others.

Two photographs of fashion accessories with their smooth advertising aesthetics provide a contrast to the paintings. Their presentation form seems rather disproportionately large considering they are smart phone snapshots from magazines. Is this an allusion to how the media superficially influences and appraises both sport and art – as loud and glittering – thus often overshadowing earnest appreciation and serious examination of both sporting talent and artistic creation? Whether to accept the artist’s challenge to participate in the currently selected theme is left up to the viewer.

-Aline Fieker