Michaela Eichwald: MÄR

Maureen Paley is pleased to present, MÄR, our third exhibition by Michaela Eichwald, held across both the gallery at 60 Three Colts Lane and Studio M.

Rather than pursuing a formal fine arts education, she studied philosophy, history, and art history in Cologne, developing her approach through close engagement with peers including Michael Krebber, Cosima von Bonin, Jutta Koether, and Diedrich Diederichsen.1 Language has remained central to her practice throughout and written material occasionally appears directly on the surfaces of her paintings.

She makes consistent use of unconventional materials; often preferring printed polyurethane fabrics and coloured pleather rather than traditional linen or cotton, applying lacquer, shellac ink, spray paint, soil, graphite, metallic marker, and stickers alongside paint. Before a work is stretched and hung, it may have been stepped on, smudged, stained, or otherwise deliberately mishandled. Her work engages critically with the visual language of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, replacing their seriousness with self-doubt and humour, treating the history of painting not as a fixed tradition to uphold but as a resource to probe, expand, and occasionally deflate.

title notes: the exhibition takes its title from mär, a historic German word for a story, legend, or fable, and an older root of märchen, the word commonly used today that translates to fairytale.