Text über den Künstler - English
“The flower, the rat, the child, the pencil sharpener, the astronaut,
how do these beings and objects come together to form a unity – it
would, of course, seem to be more easily possible in their art than in
the world of linguistically ordered categories ...
The artistic works of Micha Payer and Martin Gabriel make it possible to
combine one category with another in a playfully simple way: living
things with objects, natural things with artificial things. However, the
aim of doing so is not to set up a surreal alternative world, but
rather to re-create the factual world, one in which it is possible to be
different. Their art is communication, i.e. something created for
beholders, including themselves. Yet the communication does not proceed
via perception, but rather takes the form of perception directly. What
is perceived and experienced inwardly forces its way out and there
becomes crossed with the world, which already exists there a priori,
pre-scribed – as a sign, as writing, as an image: the material is
drawn from articles from encyclopaedias, photographs, drawings from
natural history books, children’s books or young people’s
encyclopaedias. However, it is then relayered, piled up in a heap, or
put together as a bed which retains the silhouettes of the sleeping
family. Or clearly separates them from the mundanity by which they are
otherwise devoured. ”
(quot. Ferdinand Schmatz)