Galerie Dantendorfer
MICHAEL ENDLICHER
How to paint a character
27 November 2025 – 07 January 2026
Exhibition: How to paint a character
Artist: Michael Endlicher
Opening speech: Roman Grabner (Director Bruseum / Neue Galerie Graz)
Duration: 27 November 2025 – 07 January 2026
With the exhibition “How to paint a character”, Galerie Dantendorfer presents a new body of work by Vienna-based artist Michael Endlicher, which once again engages with the intersection of language, signs, and images. Positioned between painting, conceptual art, and semantic play, Endlicher unfolds a pictorial world in which writing becomes form and form becomes sign.
The title “How to paint a character” plays on the ambiguity of the term “character” — referring both to letters and to figures, personalities, and types. From this, Endlicher develops a series of so-called “sign-images” that strikingly dissolve the boundaries between writing and representation. His “characters” are composed of letters, numbers, and typographic symbols — graphic elements that normally function as carriers of information, but here become pictorial protagonists.
One example is the sketch-like figure of a cowboy, assembled from coarse signs: angular, boxy, yet clearly recognizable, especially when viewed from a slight distance. The eye shifts between reading and seeing, between meaning and form. Endlicher thus invites the viewer into a perceptual game that operates on both an intellectual and a sensory level — a reflection on the legibility of the world and the legibility of art.
Exhibition Views
