With this interest in otherwise unnoticed things, Matauschek moves in an artistic tradition that already formed a counter-model to the "important" subjects and genres of painting in 17th century Dutch painting or the pictures of the Dresden painter Christian Friedrich Gille in the early 19th century. The publicist Johann Heinrich Merck wrote about this in his observations on landscape painting as early as 1771:
"... but if an object, even the most meagre, is visited often and for a long time, viewed from all distances and points of view, walked around at all times of the day and year, one soon realises what is abstract about it and what is accidental. [...] All the secrets and fixed laws of nature are revealed, and one then learns how they illuminate, spread variety and magic over things already seen a thousand times and thus avoid the disgust of the monotonous. Moreover, what insights into the limits of art, of what can and cannot be depicted, if you persevere with an object!"
Dr Holger Birkholz spoke at the opening on Friday, 10 March at 8 pm.
Catalogue
A catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition.