THOMAS LOCHER
(Germany, 1956)


The mystical character of commodities
does not originate, therefore in their use value, 2007
wood, acrylic paint, aluminium, 180 x 228 cm
Courtesy Alison and Peter W. Klein Collection,
Eberdingen-Nussdorf







There is a definite social relation
between men, that assumes, in their
eyes, the fantastic form of a relation
between things,2007
eight paintings, wood, acrylic paint and aluminium
72 x 92 x 3 cm, Courtesy the artist, Galerie Six Friedrich
Lisa Ungar, Munich









Thomas Locher works with quotes from The Capital by Karl Marx in which the German philosopher analysed in deep the capitalistic economy. The sentence “The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their use value” describes the fetish character of commodities as one of the fundamentals of the capitalistic consumer society. The artist painted it in huge black letters on a large-format tableau, commenting it with streaks and dashes of pink, yellow and light blue colours. A series of medium-format paintings, conceived as multiples, presents the quote “There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things” in white letters on diversely coloured backgrounds. Again streaks and dashes of colour appear as a pictorial and semantic comment of the artist himself. Marx basically states that the exchange value of an object, as being expressed in its price, does not originate in its use value, but ultimately in the person who produced it. Objects are therefore materialized social relations able to transfer a social condition. By combining the statements with expressive apparently aggressive gestures the artist creates a conceptual correlation between Marx’s analysis and the art market, in which he is confronted with the same principles of social relations materializing in objects. Thomas Locher sees his art, as he once said, as a dialectical process, “the aim being to sublate and overcome this dialectic”.


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