Paint it back

Time Out, Sarah Kent

Sarah Kent looks for the meaning of art in "The Triumph of Painting".

Part two of Charles Saatchi's "The Triumph of Painting" features five Germans and a Pole, all of whose work has a retro feel. Picking over the remnants of abstract and figurative languages, they glean enough fragments to create hybrid forms that, like Frankenstein, mimic vitality but are not able to engage with life. And no matter how flamboyant, the results feel somewhat hollow - empty reflections on former glories.

Travelling restlessly to Asia, the Middle East and South America in search of the exotic, Franz Ackermann encounters only clich�s. Everywhere cities look the same, nature is tamed and re-presented as luxurious resorts. Cultural differences are reframed as tourist attractions. He employs the bright, acrylic colours of Pop art; hard-edged, rainbow curves explode across the terrain of "Mental Map: Evasion V", eclipsing the snapshot views of places - a flyover, generic housing, concrete high rises, a seaside resort - that could refer to almost anywhere. Like forced laughter, a mood of artificial glee permeates a picture that reminds me of "The Merry-Go-Round". Painted by Mark Gertler in response to the horrors of WWI, it features robotic riders, their mouths open in a scream of false merriment. "Zooropa" is structured like a merry-go-round, and dominating "Helicopter XVI" is a whirling of brittle colours resembling a plastic windmill rather than helicopter blades - as though a flight through the surrounding, blue-black skyscrapers yielded little more than a vicarious thrill of a child's toy.

The influence of Gerhard Richter infects the work of Polish artist, Wilhelm Sasnal. Like Richter's "Betty", Anka turns away from us to look over her shoulder. Instead of the blonde embodiment of health, though, Sasnal's "Girl Smoking" has between her pink lips the instrument of her downfall. As in "Peaches" and "Dominika", the fag in the corner of her mouth is the worm at the core of the apple; it signifies approaching ill health as well as the brevity of youth. While Peaches' skin has already acquired a livid green tint, Anka's pale flesh mimics the pallor of the grave. "Portrait after Rodchenko Lady," warns against innocent optimism. In Sasnal's painting, the feature of the young revolutionary captured by Rodchenko's camera have hardened into robotic certainty. One can imagine her being fanatical enough to wear the suicide belt portrayed with offhand charm in "Terrorist Equipment".

Disasters such as floods and car and train crashes are meat and drink to Dirk Skreber. He paints them with luscious nonchalance, sometimes from above as though seen from a helicopter, sometimes in panoramic sweeps as though recorded with a fish-eye lens. In place of photo-realism, though, he gives us painterly tricks and sleights of hand. A line of shacks engulfed by muddy water but, dripping with creamy paint, the roofs resemble biscuits coated with icing. In "It Rocks Us So Hard - Ho, Ho, Ho" a car has collided with the crash barrier after demolishing a motorbike. The abandoned vehicles seem like ghoulish memorials to the victims who languish in the hospital or morgue; but, for Skreber, these crumpled heaps of scarred metal are an opportunity for a display of nifty brushwork and arty splatters done with such relish that they make the studied indifference of Warhol's "Disaster" series seem sentimental. Kai Altoff's fey take on violence is far more troubling. Mimicking the expressionism of Kathe Kollwitz or the narcissism of Egon Schiele, he evokes the past while apparently heroising the nastier sides of male behaviour. Two soldiers brutalise a victim but, painted with fairy tale charm, the scene is rendered innocent. The dandyism of an orange-on-orange painting of two soldiers - one killing or saving his colleague - negates dubious subject matter with elegant style.

A contemporary of Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen is the oldest exponent of the world-weary approach exemplified by this show, which sees failure as the inevitable outcome of painting. Figuration and abstraction coexist in canvases that are concerned more with the concepts and stratagems of painting than with the resulting imagery. Perplexing yet oddly convincing despite their contradictions, ambiguities, negations and dead ends, his paintings defy resolution or descriptions; I bet you'd keep coming back to them, though.