Malerei
Nowadays, with any graphics programme all possible kinds of pictures can be produced on the computer. New aesthetic concepts have been established through an interaction of logo culture, the advertising industry and mass media in general.
For this very reason, a style of painting that refers to web art or is influenced by it has to find new and authentic ways of representation. Unless it succeeds in doing so, it will hardly go beyond functioning as a piece of furniture. Stefan Osterider?s works are a mixture of concrete and informal abstraction. His paintings are neither descriptive nor naturalistic, and they have little to do with the representation of an inner world. Of course, they do contain some of the elements which the genre of panel painting is traditionally associated with: There are traces of gesturalism, there are colours as means of expression. Yet, the question of representation is solved in a new way here: Osterider?s works are two-dimensional structures to which a third dimension is added by means of a variety of similar and independent shapes. Through these separate elements, an illusion of depth is created ? like in a front-stage backstage setting. The question is whether these shapes are just random blotches or whether they have been intentionally isolated from a different structure or pattern and transferred to new surroundings that may be transformed according to the ideas of the artist. Here, gesturalism is combined with geometry, the automatic repetition of shapes is mixed with deliberate variation [...]; contours, curves, lines and planes are connected with one another. There is both calculated reduction and playfulness. The interesting thing is that in Osterider?s paintings, these contrasting elements are not played off against one another - as has often been the case in the history of the avant-garde - but rather enhance one another. As contemporary painting can hardly ignore the manifold implications of the web, Osterider deliberately utilizes the consequences of electronic communication [...] instead. Actually, the multiplicity of codes and the random character of information that we have to deal with nowadays are quite remarkable. Some of this variety of contrasts is reflected in Osterider?s works. This interaction of opposites is a very unique thing indeed: the mixture of different artistic languages and different formal elements may be seen as both critique and innovation. And this is what painting is all about.
Franz Niegelhell, Katalog, Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg, 1998