Thomas Bayrle: humanity and the machine

(Thomas Bayrle, Hemdenleben (blaue Version), 1970 courtesy of Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin)

The German artist Thomas Bayrle is currently exhibiting over 300 works – mostly collages and sculptures – at Wiels. His “All-in-One” show offers a large-scale retrospective of a multi-faceted oeuvre spanning 50 years. “Nature, the everyday, and the machine are the most beautiful things in existence,” he believes.

Since the 1960s Thomas Bayrle (born in Berlin in 1937) has for the most part produced collages, sculptures, and paintings, although his work has also included short (animated) films and texts. Like the pop artists of the 1960s, he has always drawn his inspiration from everyday, decidedly banal objects. His early silkscreen prints, for example, showed a cock, a beer glass, a tiger, or a cow. At that time – in the early Sixties – his pictures were the result of the constant repetition of the same pattern; this became Bayrle’s instantly recognisable trade mark. His representation of a beer glass, for example, is what is called a “super-image”, built up out of hundreds of similar drawings. That serial technique created an effect of depth. Because of this cheerful juggling with optical effects, Bayrle has also often been linked with what is called op art.

(Thomas Bayrle, La vache qui rit, 1967. Courtesy Thomas Bayrle)

Bayrle himself recalls: “I had the advantage of being trained as a weaver. Even now, the structure of different fabrics still fascinates me. Weaving comes up in the repetition in my work. Personally, I have always seen in it a metaphor for the organisation of streets and cities and even for society as a whole. That structure also has a rhythm, just like the machines in the factories where I worked at first – places where you only survive if you adapt your body to the droning of the machine. The combination of humanity and machine is the basis of all my work. The choice of everyday objects arises from a critical attitude to mass production. I try, in addition, to convey the beauty of everyday things in a humorous way.”

Consumer society
Over the years Bayrle has experimented with new techniques. In the 1980s he was the first German artist to make works with the help of a computer. Political concerns have also played a role. Bayrle has, for example, painted portraits of Stalin, Willy Brandt, and – more recently – Condoleezza Rice. A subdued protest has continued to be present in all of his work, a suggestion of resistance to the established order. His silkscreens of everyday objects, for example, make critical reference to the reconstruction of post-war Germany and the associated emergence of a consumer society.

(Thomas Bayrle, M-Formation, 1970. Courtesy of Barbara Weiss Gallery, Berlin)

Says Bayrle, “I have a great sense of justice that, sadly, never coincides with official policy. It constantly amazes me how simply the machine we have called society is organised for such a wide variety of people. In my work I try to be honest with myself and also to stand up for the rights of others. That has meant that in the course of my life I have come into contact with lots of political groups, from soft to radical movements such as RAF, the Maoists, and the Leninists. It always comes down to the same thing in the end: I don’t fit in anywhere. I felt most at home in the art school model [Bayrle taught for more than thirty years at the academy in Frankfurt - IS]. With some twenty individuals we were able to practise something there that I would call democracy at its best: everyone gave and got back a proportionate in- and output.”

The rule of the car
At Wiels you can see a retrospective of Bayrle’s oeuvre: no fewer than 300 works spread over three floors. The exhibition circuit rejects chronology and opts for a thematic presentation, with works grouped according to themes such as political propaganda and the sexual revolution. The exhibition’s title, “All-in-One”, a term often used in advertising and marketing, actually comes from a Buddhist maxim. Bayrle explains: “At first I wanted to call the exhibition ‘Repetition’, until the director of Wiels, Dirk Snauwaert, came up with this suggestion. ‘All-in-One’ has something mechanical about it, but it also refers to the Chinese belief that each is everything together and vice versa – ‘we are all one’. It incorporates the Confucian idea that little parts form totalities in themselves, while at the same time being essential to the greater whole.”

(Thomas Bayrle, There Is Fire in the Wheat, Maerzverlag, 1970 / Thomas Bayrle, Wallpaper image from Feuer im Weizen, 1970, Maerzverlag. Courtesy Thomas Bayrle / Hans Widauer)

The machine, and the motor car in particular, is another recurring motif in Bayrle’s work and one that is abundantly represented in the Wiels show. There are, of course, “super-images” of cars to be seen; but there are also spatial installations of motorways and – the most spectacular element of the exhibition – kinetic sculptures based on car engines. Those recent works already caught the eye at Documenta 13, the world’s most important art event, at which Bayrle was a guest before in 1964 (Documenta 3) and 1977 (Documenta 6). As Bayrle sees it, “The car is a vulgar, beautiful blunder. It symbolises sex and mass production, leads to wars over oil, destroys the wonders of nature and our planet, gives pleasure, and so on. It is at once primitive and sophisticated; it creates and destroys. All those metaphors run through my work. The engine sculptures refer to Gothic architecture and to monks. Placed close to each other, those engines are a bit like a small cathedral. When they are running they make the sound of machines, but I hope the viewer will also be able to imagine the mantra of singing monks at the same time.”

Thomas Bayrle: All-in-One • 9/2 > 12/5, wo/me/We > zo/di/Su 11 > 18.00, €5, WIELS, avenue Van Volxemlaan 354, Vorst/Forest, 02-340.00.50, www.wiels.org