Paul Thek Ohne Titel Gouache auf Zeitungspapier. 57 x 71,5 cm. Unter Glas gerahmt. Signiert und datiert 'Thek 83'. - Rückseitig punktuell fest auf den Unterlagenkarton montiert. Ausstellungen Karlsruhe 2008 (ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie), Hamburg (Sammlung Falckenberg), Madrid 2009 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), Paul Thek, In the Context of Today's Contemporary Art, Ausst.Kat., S.550 mit Farbabb. (mit abweichenden Maßangaben) (mit rückseitigem Aufkleber) Mit dem Zeitungspapier wählt der Künstler ein Medium, dass seine Vergänglichkeit versinnbildlicht. Nicht nur die Beschaffenheit des Papiers suggeriert mit seinen Altersspuren ihren Verfall, sondern auch die tagesaktuellen Nachrichten, die partiell durch die Übermalungen hindurchscheinen und sie an den Rändern flankieren, zeugen von der Schnelllebigkeit der Zeit. Mit seinem Werk individualisiert Paul Thek nicht nur einen Teil des Massenmediums, sondern hält mit den datumsspezifischen Angaben einen jeweiligen Fixpunkt der Zeitgeschichte fest und personalisiert diesen. “Though the newspaper works appeared to be random, and at times resembled writing more than drawing, as a whole they constituted a visual diary and travelogue. There was an ascetic quality to the systematic way in which Thek continually recorded his life over the entire course of his career. You can almost hear the silence, the meditative nature of the process of the making of the newspaper works, but they are also imbued with the quality of sheet music that reverberates off of the page. In Thek's work, no subject evades his mockery, mirth, and empathy, expressed through a touch that manages to be both cynical and idealistic. Like fully formed pages from an oversized sketchbook, the newspaper works could appear classical, cartoon-like, or as if thought-bubbles, there was no way to anticipate with. There were grapes on vines, potatoes, seascapes, landscapes, garden dwarfs, snakes, dinosaurs, hammers and sickles, and the Statue of Liberty - the whimsical and the lighthearted, but there was always more to be read into them. They proffered an uncensored snapshot of Thek's mind eye. These works possessed a multi-layered, philosophical, and ageless conceptual delicacy - a traditional conception of beauty in the hopeful, transcendent sense of the world. Not indulgent, self-congratulatory, or clichéd, but rather celebratory and all-embracing: with an emotionality worn on-the-sleeve, but nevertheless romantic.” (Kenny Schachter, Nothing but Time, in: Harald Falckenberg u.a. (Hg.), Paul Thek Artist's Artist, Ausst.Kat. Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe u.a. 2008, S.121). Paul Thek Untitled Gouache on newsprint. 57 x 71.5 cm. Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'Thek 83'. - Occasionally firmly mounted on card support verso. Exhibitions Karlsruhe 2008 (ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie ), Hamburg (collection Falckenberg), Madrid 2009 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), Paul Thek, In the Context of Today's Contemporary Art, exhib.cat., p.550 with colour illus. (with diverging dimensions) (label verso) With the newsprint the artist chooses a medium which epitomises its transience. Not only the quality of paper and its traces of age suggests its decay but also the current daily news that is partially visible through the overpainting, flanking it in the margins, testify the fast pace of time. In this work, Paul Thek not only individualises parts of the mass medium but with the date-specific information also documents a particular fixed point in contemporary history and personalises it.