Jesaja Aljoscha Trummer
Cotton Cloths

With its STAGES format, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark offers young artists from Graz and the Styria region a platform to present their work in the form of focused evening events. This recurring series serves as a stage for new positions, experiments, and critical reflection — always in dialogue with current exhibitions at the institution. In the context of the exhibitions by Evelyn Plaschg and Louise Giovanelli, this edition of STAGES features Jesaja Aljoscha Trummer, whose painting engages with questions of materiality, corporeality, and image-making.

One of Trummer’s recent bodies of work references the tradition of textile patterns — conceived as structuring, ordering, but also sensually charged surfaces. Each work in the series bears a simple title, Mustertuch (“cooton cloths”), along with a sequential number. In these pieces, Trummer draws upon grids, lattice frameworks. Particularly striking in Trummer’s practice — and especially in this series — is his pastose application of oil paint: applied in thick horizontal and vertical strokes, the material acquires a physical presence that evokes the tactile quality of thread in handcrafted textiles. These intersecting lines generate small structures that arise intuitively during the painting process and often incorporate subtle shifts in color. Through this painterly method, motifs and patterns emerge not only as images but also as tactile presences that blur the boundary between surface and depth, abstraction and objecthood.

At the same time, the combination of textile grounds and figurative elements recalls the work of Rosemarie Trockel, who played with the ambiguity of decoration and pictorial content. In Trummer’s paintings, figurative and abstract elements dissolve into one another — creating a space of contact, layering, and painterly experimentation with structures that remain simultaneously ordered and open.

The STAGES evening with Jesaja Aljoscha Trummer places his practice in dynamic dialogue with the positions of Evelyn Plaschg and Louise Giovanelli. While Plaschg interweaves digital fragmentation with painterly corporeality and Giovanelli explores texture, surface, and light, Trummer introduces a visual vocabulary that feels raw and immediate, yet subtly subverts conventional expectations of representation. Between textile and grid, an unexpectedly intense painterly space unfolds — one that probes the relationship between image, material, and perception.

The presentation is on view during exhibition hours in the institution’s entrance hall until September 14.

Mustertuch 17, 2025

95 × 65,5 cm

Oil on linen

Mustertuch 19, 2025

25 × 20 cm

Oil on cotton

Mustertuch 13, 2025

95 × 65,5 cm

Oil on linen

Mustertuch 14, 2025

95 × 65,5 cm

Oil on linen

Mustertuch 5, 2025

25 × 20 cm

Oil on cotton