Matthias Groebel
Matthias Groebel (b. 1958 Aachen, Germany) works and lives in Cologne. Over the past four decades, Groebel has created a unique oeuvre featuring paintings based on images from television, along with drawings, photographs, videos, and research works. As a trained pharmacist, Groebel came to art in the early 1980s as an autodidact. It was during this period that private analog satellite television spread throughout West German households, allowing unprecedented round-the-clock access to a wide range of international television programs. Groebel’s works reflect this new media condition of open-access television, which directly paved the way for the subscription-based streaming and pay-per-view services of today. In the late 1980s, Groebel developed a machine that allowed him to transfer images from the television onto canvas, a complex process involving multiple stages and applications of paint with an airbrush pistol. Groebel’s production process played on a reciprocal and closely intertwined relationship between artist/painter, technology, and generative form-finding in an era of profound technological change and the digital turn. His images have a mysterious physical presence and convey a powerful sense of psychological latency, bringing out the subtle tensions and power structures inherent within a gesture, a gaze, or the biting of nails, often contrary to the intrinsic and profit-driven agendas of the entertainment industry.Exploring themes of voyeurism, surveillance, and gentrification, Groebel’s work traces the proliferation of “poor” images that accompanied the democratization of media at the cusp of the digital age, capturing the psychological currents underlying narratives of progress.
Groebel’s recent survey exhibition A CHANGE IN WEATHER was held at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf in 2022. Selected recent group exhibitions include: 15th GWANGJU BIENNALE, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, South Korea (2024); MULTI-USER DUNGEON, curated by Simon Denny, Petzel Gallery, New York (2024); HOI KOELN, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2023); DOWSING, curated by Nick Irvin, Layr, Vienna (2023); UNDER MACHINE THING, Francis Irv, New York (2023); UNTO DUST, Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris (2023); ONLY ONE STEP FROM HEAVEN, La SIRA, Asnière-sur-Seine (2022); and THE WIG, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2022). Recent monographs include PHANTOMS ALL AROUND ME with a text by Luciana Parisi (2024) and BROADCAST MATERIAL (2022).
CV
Works
Matthias Groebel (b. 1958 Aachen, Germany) works and lives in Cologne. Over the past four decades, Groebel has created a unique oeuvre featuring paintings based on images from television, along with drawings, photographs, videos, and research works. As a trained pharmacist, Groebel came to art in the early 1980s as an autodidact. It was during this period that private analog satellite television spread throughout West German households, allowing unprecedented round-the-clock access to a wide range of international television programs. Groebel’s works reflect this new media condition of open-access television, which directly paved the way for the subscription-based streaming and pay-per-view services of today. In the late 1980s, Groebel developed a machine that allowed him to transfer images from the television onto canvas, a complex process involving multiple stages and applications of paint with an airbrush pistol. Groebel’s production process played on a reciprocal and closely intertwined relationship between artist/painter, technology, and generative form-finding in an era of profound technological change and the digital turn. His images have a mysterious physical presence and convey a powerful sense of psychological latency, bringing out the subtle tensions and power structures inherent within a gesture, a gaze, or the biting of nails, often contrary to the intrinsic and profit-driven agendas of the entertainment industry.Exploring themes of voyeurism, surveillance, and gentrification, Groebel’s work traces the proliferation of “poor” images that accompanied the democratization of media at the cusp of the digital age, capturing the psychological currents underlying narratives of progress.
Groebel’s recent survey exhibition A CHANGE IN WEATHER was held at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf in 2022. Selected recent group exhibitions include: 15th GWANGJU BIENNALE, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, South Korea (2024); MULTI-USER DUNGEON, curated by Simon Denny, Petzel Gallery, New York (2024); HOI KOELN, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2023); DOWSING, curated by Nick Irvin, Layr, Vienna (2023); UNDER MACHINE THING, Francis Irv, New York (2023); UNTO DUST, Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris (2023); ONLY ONE STEP FROM HEAVEN, La SIRA, Asnière-sur-Seine (2022); and THE WIG, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2022). Recent monographs include PHANTOMS ALL AROUND ME with a text by Luciana Parisi (2024) and BROADCAST MATERIAL (2022).
CV
Works
