Monika Baer Am Rhein Kunsthalle Bern

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The small shock of a joke, just enough, a surprise to the viewer befuddled. A balancing act: not too much be rejected as random, but just enough to be comedy. Painting was long ago converted to interface, an conscious interaction between painter viewer. Painter has the mic. The surprise is fun, funny, played for laughs in the deadpan space of art. 

See too: Monika Baer at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

Monika Baer at Barbara Weiss

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Baer playing her own game of painting, our fun is figuring out the rules. There are many ways to play painting acceptably - we, like canvas, can support both Merlin Carpenter or Caravaggio - ideologies that Baer seems to enjoy abutting in flat statements for all static they can generate. Mixed modes that present a sort of meta play of figuring out which boardgame entered. These churn Ryman's milk to cream: the monochrome nullification of the "picture" displaces content to the edges, surface, and hardware which are little comedy acts: "a moment of resistance that appears absurd in its utter ineffectiveness."These are bit more buttery than Ryman, a sensuous to the topography which refuses to totally negate the "picture" with color, comedy. Pleasures are denied and reinstated, the picture plane is mocked with cartoonified sweat but open to atmosphere, the viewer is asked to look in only to be pressed out by a little turd. I'm not sure how you win.