Jakob Traxlmayr

Bio

Jakob Traxlmayr

For more than 20 years, Jakob Traxlmayr has been engaging with the possibilities of pictorial composition.

Challenging the principles of classical Stylewriting, he has continuously questioned how a painting is constructed. His architectural approach, analytical and at the same time intuitive, led him to experiment with various deconstructive methods.

State of Emergency

The climax of this path was reached when series of »buff-stains«, i.e. traces of cleaned artworks, started to appear on trains in various public transport systems. A painting in public space exists on the premise that it will disappear. Its destruction is immanent in the system, and therefore it cannot be integrated and capitalized by economic forces. This paradox motivates Traxlmayr. He adapts techniques of train cleaning to create new compositions by reversing their usage. His current works are a result of this subversive gesture.