Jakob Gasteiger developed his radical minimalist image concept in the early 1980s. His artistic self-understanding has evolved in the context of the then controversial discussed debate about postmodernism and is in contrast to the picturesque approach the so-called "New Wild", which were all the rage in the eighties.

Far from neo-expressive tendencies, he worked on building autonomous aspects to the question of image and object, color and the image carrier, the composition of his painting mediums and the process of applying paint. Artistically he oriented himself by the American painters of the circle of Minimal Art such as Brice Marden, Agnes Martin and Robert Mangold, who reduced their formal means radically. In 1984 Gasteiger experimented with self-made cardboard spatulas and a grooved frame structure. With equally grooved pictures he took his own artistic path.

Gasteiger sees his painting as a craft process: as the paintbrush tool touches the cardboard, not the expressive gesture of the artist is crucial, but rather applying the color matter in a uniform, linear rhythm. It emphasizes the mechanical construction and a procedural manufacturing: the relief structure of the image is always read as a moving lane.

Gasteiger's works are mainly influenced by the severity of a monochrome job and the regularity of the drawn into the acrylic paste grooves. Sexy and surprising, however, especially those areas of the image where it comes through the meshing of the color matter to small deviations and breaks the rhythm of color furrows. Gasteiger himself has referred to this slight disturbances in itself is very rigorous pictorial structure: "I have sometimes taken on the task to repeat a successful picture to copy me, so to speak myself, but that is impossible. I was and am always willing to pay during the operation to the unexpected and to incorporate it in to work with. It is never possible to predict the outcome. Although I have a clear idea of what relates to the size, color, texture color, thickness direction of the structure, these parameters also guide me and hence the result. Especially in large formats, resistance is growing, and it is not possible to predict exactly how the result will look like. "

For all the rigor of the monochrome relief structure Gasteiger's works always prove to be extremely sensual aesthetic structures that play with the charm of tactile and open the viewer for the complex effects of light and color. (CMG)