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Milena Büsch

Milena Büsch‘s position in painting is rather conceptual. Her approach is based on a search for image material that pushes the system of presentation in an institution that exhibits art to its limits, at least in the sense of a limit to taste that the framework of the institution can now longer easily declare to be art, or certainly not on the basis of a first quick view. Currently, Büsch repaints pages or covers from the tabloid press and automobile magazines. In the past, she has also used motifs from advertising or trashy design objects like carpets, themed paper serviettes, or printed canvases from DIY stores. We know different forms of appropriation from recent art history, classically undertaken with serial techniques such as silkscreen printing or photography. In Büsch’s work the appropriations are unique objects with just one painted version, while the magazine from which the piece is taken exists in tens of thousands of copies.

The act of repainting is performed directly onto the magazine page or other found object and motif. The painted medium is thus always dictated by the motif chosen, which will then be presented in oil paints. What happens in this act of transfer is far more than just reproduction or appropriation. Overpainting in oil leads to inaccuracies in the process, which can sometimes take several months even for small motifs. These inaccuracies, small mistakes made during the repainting, and also the textures of the oil paints lead to a kind of signature or at least traces of the reworking that the artist undertakes. These small structures create an impression of the painterly, which in most of these works also has an effect on the overarching structure of the entire image. Even if we initially think we are standing before an exact mechanical copy, upon becoming aware of these fine differences a different impression takes over.

Above all, these works show us what we ourselves associate with painting, how its mechanisms operate, what expectations we have of the medium, and what pictures gain when they are transferred from another genre into painting. This is connected with the fact that we believe we know very well the models” and motifs” that Büsch selects and have expectations of them that perhaps run contrary or do not correspond to what we expect of painting.

The motif taken from the magazine Adel aktuell (2022) is particularly humorous, as the beholders are challenged to find mistakes in the picture, which depicts a soccer game and is, as usual, shown in both versions hanging one above the other, with the upper picture titled original and the lower one declared to be a fake. Just these ascriptions using these evaluating categories is highly ambiguous, and in terms of the copy in oil paints completely meaningless. This impression is strengthened by the painted copy displaying those technical defects that make a comparison difficult or even impossible.

In the work Auto Motor Sport (2022) the extent of the changes between the original glossy photograph and the painted version is perhaps much clearer. The picture is an arrangement of 25 covers of the magazine of the work’s title in five rows of five, thus corresponding to one year of published numbers of the magazine. The different vehicles are hard to identify in their painted versions, with details becoming more like patches of paint and color rather than legible typologies. Here, a further effect of the format is that the single pictures merge into a row and thus reinforce each other. The transfer of these glossy images from the world of advertising or magazines into the DIY aesthetics of Büsch’s oil painting is a reflection on the act of copying, on painting, and on the imagery that is so ubiquitous in our everyday lives.


Auto Motor Sport, 2022
Oil on magazine pages, mounted on cardboard, frame of the artist
142,8 × 110,8 cm
Courtesy J. Patrick Collins; FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Adel aktuell, 2022
Oil on magazine page
28 × 22 cm
Courtesy FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna

Milena Büsch

*1980, lives in Frankfurt and Berlin

Solo (et al.): Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2022, 2019), Paris Internationale (2021), Forgo, Berlin (2020), Geld, London (2019), Diana Lambert, Vienna (2015); Shows (et al.): Galerie der Stadt Schwaz (2021), Lars Friedrich, Berlin (2020), Éduard Montassut, Paris (2019), Freudenberger, Vienna (2017), Nagel/​Draxler, Cologne (2013)