Many-Valued Aesthetics: Interconnections in the Work of Mary Bauermeister

Yes, No, Perhaps are the most written words in Mary Bauermeister’s artworks. Together they stand for the concept of many-valued aesthetics in the German artist’s oeuvre - an aesthetic that Bauermeister developed using many-valued logic. Hauke Ohls brings the artist’s central groups of works in context with each other as well as with the neo-avant-garde of the post-war period in Europe and the USA. He shows that the development of Bauermeister’s art may appear disparate, but her canvas and relief works, drawings and writing pictures, lens boxes and stone pictures are characterized by a reciprocal relationship of combinations and interconnections. Through the ubiquitous use of meta-references, the entire oeuvre ultimately appears as an interconnected assemblage.

Hauke Ohls, PhD, is a research assistant at the Chair of Contemporary Art and Digital Image Cultures at the Institute of Art History, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. Prior to this, he conducted research and taught art history at the Universities of Duisburg-Essen, Trier and Aarhus. His research focuses on theoretical, sociological, and philosophical questions of modern and contemporary art, especially ecological aesthetics, discourses on object, materiality and image as well as the relationship between art, economy, and neo-liberalism.