Peter Sehringer / Gallery No.  1139

‘Chamölion’ is an early work from the decisive formative phase of Sehringer’s visual language. The animal motif has already been reduced entirely to a painterly cipher. At the same time, the relief-like, material-emphasised surface foreshadows the fusion of painting and object that is characteristic of Sehringer’s work, as it would later emerge.
In the context of his entire body of work, the piece is of particular interest as an early precursor to the later, extensive ‘Animali’ series. In this series from the 2000s, Sehringer repeatedly uses animals as highly reduced, almost symbolic visual motifs.
The 1998 ‘Chameleon’ is, in a sense, the seed of this later development in a much more concentrated form.
It is precisely this that makes the piece more interesting from an art-historical perspective than any random small work from his later period.