Picture-pictures

The incarnadine colors used by Thomas Jocher in his painting, as well as his bulky pictorial bodies resembling pillows guide materiality along abstract paths, undermining the tradition of figuration as a synonym of the image- like presentation of the human body. The pictures are transformed into objects having sculptural features, or they suggest three-dimensional illusions which emphasize the role of the viewer by relating to his own corporeal and spatial perception. Jocher's works, therefore, provide an environment for memories of one's own body, its identity shaped by society, and the fragmentation of that identity. The perspective order of the paintings sucks in the viewer, as it were, or it keeps him aloof. “The effect, at any rate, is physical“ (Jocher). The work of art, which “seizes“ the viewer's body by means of the gaze, attempts to “convince the gaze to include the body in the viewing process“ (Jocher). The anticipation of receptive modes carried out deliberately in the production, as well as the channelling of the gaze and the body through the picture also comprise the perception of the picture as furniture and a decorative part of cultivated and educated coziness. Explaining this type of pictorial function means to distill the meaning of pictures from their social and cultural conditions, regarding these conditions of the picture as one of its contents.

“picture pictures“, the pictorial body and the painted surface become the very subject of painting. In these pictures, Jocher paints their own portraits, capsizing and twisting the painted surfaces, as if the picture within the picture showed itself from another side or in another angle. In doing so, he generates perspective alignments and folds reminiscent of windows and make believe openings in the wall. Between the real surface of the picture and its painted double we see an imaginary space stretching in perspective alignment. From one location in the room, the perspective order of the given picture appears to be “correct” for the viewer. Then a “compelling identification of the viewer with what is viewed“ sets in, while at the same time clearly being a construct of feigned realities. Hence, this painting dealing with its own specificity simultaneously relates to the viewer and his perceptive experiences. In Jocher's ceuvre, the picture projecting into the room as a body, a threshold and an imaginary window is complemented by a picture turned inside out to become a spatial configuration. The painted surfaces hinged towards each other form cases and housings for the viewer's body. Painted with flesh colors and turned to the inside, these spatial pictures bring corporeality and the viewer's inclusion into extremely close proximity, playfully using the element of fusion by means of their inversions. Pictures which, as bodies turned inside out having their skins arranged inwardly, physically receive, and are able to engulf, the viewer's body, defining viewing as inhabiting. The viewer embraced by the real space of the picture virtually vanishes in it, while the picture disappears from his vision and becomes his second skin.


Rainer Fuchs

text in Catalogue"Coming Up, Junge Kunst aus Österreich " Museum of Modern Art , Vienna.