Museum 52 are pleased to announce their second show with Stefan Sandner, and his first with the New York gallery. Sandner is a painter. As a painter he sees himself involved in a long history of contemporary and modern painting that he feels he cannot ignore. He believes abstract painting cannot be made within a bubble, unconscious and unaware of precedents, the individual and the transience that exists within the hierarchy of visual material.

Sandner does not allow his self to be separated from the paintings but gently permits it to stay through the use of found text. The text, or vessels for text, used in his paintings all maintain a personal association. In one piece incoherent, childlike, scrawls on the back of a postcard become an all encompassing, large-scale painting, skillfully composed of color and line. In another the symbol from his chosen brand of cigarettes, a logo that, like painting, has been constantly updated and reinvented, becomes the focus.

Sandner’s aim is not to take painting in one way or another, but to continue a dialogue through his chosen modes of execution. The result is a unique syntax of marks, lines and color that speaks to the present as well as subversively engaging with the past.

Recent solo shows for Sandner include the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, Art Statements, Art Basel Switzerland, 2008, Museum 52, London, 2007 and Grita Insam Gallery, Vienna, 2007. In 2006 he had a major solo show at the Vienna Secession (a catalogue accompanied the exhibition). MUMOK, Vienna and The DAAD Foundation recently acquired his work for their collections. He will have solo shows next year in Los Angeles, Frankfurt and London.