The old herringbone parquet flooring has been an integral part of the gallery space for decades, bearing sometimes silent, sometimes creaking witness to the gallery's long history; a history of significant meetings, conversations and exhibitions. Three years ago, Milen Till (*1984 in Munich) took a closer look at the floor for the first time and made it – or more precisely, the triangular gaps that can be found in some places – into the protagonist of his exhibition Lückenfüller – Hommage à Palermo (Stopgaps - Homage à Palermo). In his current solo exhibition Parkett (Parquet), this supposed supporting actor takes centre stage again.   

Milen Till’s works often draw attention to things that are omnipresent but get overlooked in everyday life. The artist transposes objects of everyday use into a new context, triggering associations that cast the objects in a fresh light – and often also prompt a smile as we think of the stories Till retells here with a kind of nonchalant ease. Not least because icons from art history and pop culture are often quoted, and the focus is shifted in an ingenious fashion, luring us away from familiar paths to scrutinise things playfully.  The small blue triangles also quote an artist who left innovative traces with his work. The model for Till’s fitted Lückenfüller can be found on the wall above the gallery’s entrance in the form of a painted, much larger blue triangle by Blinky Palermo. At the time, Milen Till extended Palermo’s concept of form and colour conceived for the room to the floor, adding a further level. This time it is the other way round; the parquet flooring unfolds on the walls as well, in the shape of seven paintings. In this way, the floor is raised to the viewer's eye level and attention is paid to each wooden strip because, in contrast to the floor, the individual parts of the parquet are finely shaded here. Looking closely, we not only find a small blue triangle here and there, but also note that these are actual, true-to-scale sections of the surface on which we are currently standing. 

Milen Till devotes meticulous attention to every square centimetre of the parquet, and thus to the time and history that has passed over it. The resulting painted portraits of a wooden floor are as individual in patterning and colour as the past that the floorboards have accumulated. Till detaches the ubiquitous, often unnoticed everyday object from its customary place. Set onto the wall, the floor moves into the field of vision of those standing on it, perhaps triggering their own memories of wooden floorboards.