Review of Thomas Eggerer’s ‘Galeria’

by Mats Antonissen // Nov. 19, 2024

Capitain Petzel resides in a detached, rectangular pavilion of aluminum and glass panels, sat between prefab flats and the six-laned boulevard that is Karl-Marx-Allee. Built concurrently with the street’s renaming from Stalinallee, this piece of modernist architecture initially housed the best of Eastern Bloc art. Since 2008, it is the joint Berlin space of contemporary art galleries Gisela Capitain in Cologne and Petzel in New York. Paintings and collages by the Munich-born artist Thomas Eggerer that are presently on view bracket the rich history of the site in favour of an apathetic reckoning with the times, via an overview of recent work.

Thomas Eggerer: ‘Fitness,’ 2024 // Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel

Strolling down the boulevard, glimpses of ‘Fitness’ (2024) can be caught long before arriving at the gallery’s front door. This four-meter-high, three-meter-wide painting hangs facing the street and depicts a bird’s eye view of some 20 people scattered about a fully-equipped gym. Through a glacial palette of purples, grays and greens, the artist—and, going off scale, his numerous studio assistants—arrive at a high-contrast picture, where dark contouring emphatically separates each form from the next. Dwarfed by the scale of the depicted room, the gym members appear as lifeless and static as the assorted tools put at their disposal. Never mind the various types and stages of exercise they’re engaged in; what’s usually a place synonymous with adrenaline rushes and workout highs, now has the vibrancy of a dental clinic.

Thomas Eggerer: ‘Galeria,’ installation view, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2024 // Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel, Photo by Gunter Lepkowski

Depleted vitality similarly characterizes the series of paintings hung in the rest of the ground floor and upstairs. In these various smaller-sized works, figures huddle together on walkways suspended across the lower third of the plane. Seen from below, the hands of these mostly young, mostly male figures cradle blank signs or flags of varying, seemingly random color combinations. Their faces are obscured by the items in their hands or their own excessively long body parts. Their contorting bodies are dressed in branded activewear courtesy of both mass global brands (New Balance, North Face, Converse) and unknown enterprises (something called Joe’s Place in Wayne, P.A; a tee where the only legible letters spell “EOL UN UVY OY”). Between them, on the scaffolding-like ledge, cups, cans, paper fast food bags, shoes and megaphones are perched. Backdropping the scenes are washes of color that either compliment or repeat the palette of the ledges and the flags.

Thomas Eggerer: ‘High and Dry,’ 2021 // Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel

Paintings—dully titled ‘High and Dry’ (2021), ‘Stranded’ (2021), ‘Paramount’ (2020) and ‘North Face’ (2022)—refuse to signify much of anything beyond the brands they tout. In light of the years that birthed these works, 2020 to 2022, it’s a reticence that feels glaring. Sure, the present-day efficacy of the protest model is contestable. But Eggerer’s ironic repetition of blank signs (white rectangles, generic and cryptic brands, expressionless faces) feels excessively cynical, and at times, frankly, artless. Why, again and again, spend paint, time, thought and labor on phenomena that clearly induces indifference and contempt? This is a creative disposition that comes across as perpetually despondent.

Thomas Eggerer: ‘Galeria,’ installation view, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2024 // Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel, Photo by Gunter Lepkowski

Sharply contrasting in affect are a dozen collages on paper displayed in the gallery’s basement. Tidily cut-out fragments of film photographs appear glued on variously colored paper supports. We’re privy to the artist’s elaboration of his iconography of exercise, though instead of the atomized theater of the 21st-century fitness, we’re presented with buoyant images of group exertion of decades past. Pheromones flow freely in ‘Aerobic Ballet’ (2022) and the pre-game locker room prayer depicted in ‘Team’ (2018) is sexy and spiritual at once. Ditto for the lewdly cropped images of stretching football players that make up ‘Floorgames’ (2018). Squint at that title, and you’ll get an idea of what this Freudian cellar series is all about.

Thomas Eggerer: ‘Galeria,’ installation view, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2024 // Courtesy the artist and Capitain Petzel, Photo by Gunter Lepkowski

Evidence that today’s culture, leisure and politics are uniquely devoid of meaning abound. Making a mark in art⁠—or really anywhere else⁠—requires going beyond feedback, into the sphere of invention and ingenuity. If cut of ample irreverence, even irony yields abundant insight and feeling compared to the haughty naturalism and all-consuming nostalgia Thomas Eggerer thrusts upon us. If an artist wishes to confront society with its mindless behavior, if he wishes to inspire in us fresh thought, the mirror he holds up substantially gains in gravitas when it is somewhat cracked.