Thomas Raat

The recent work of Thomas Raat focuses on the spread of the modernist visual language. This experimental visual language, which originated from a small circle of avant-gardists, took on more conventional properties in the course of the fifties and sixties as it became adopted as an example by many artists and designers. This gave rise to an art historical twilight zone of secondary currents and applications. Raat takes this twilight zone, which includes expressions that range from furniture design to book covers, as a starting point. Through a combination of quotations and imitations, Raat simulates authentic-looking, 'modernist' images that seem to position themselves at a tipping point. The moment when the experimental nature of a radical new visual language becomes conventional, when ‘avant-garde’ becomes homey.