Collecting may not be the first word that comes to mind when one considers the work of Monika Baer. Working primarily with painting while dabbling in collage from time to time, the Berlin-based artist has created an extremely heterogeneous oeuvre that seems to defy the coherence and order generally associated with the collection.

In terms of her iconography, Baer has moved - if not jumped - over the last decade from quaint watercolour portraits to monumentally bright theatre scapes based on the Salzburg Mozart Marionette Theatre; from human and animal body parts floating on otherwise white canvases (accompanied by - what else? - a string of big teeth suspended across the gallery like a giant's pearl necklace) to a series of 'map' collages that mix found images with drawing and painting. The maps, despite their promising title, offered little indication as to Baer's directions since 2001: 'hunter' paintings organised around a central floating sphere, part head, part eyeball; a set of dreamy landscapes inhabited by lounging faceless female nudes; flying masks and birch trees, worked in collage, painting and drawing. With each new variation the critics, from Clemens Krümmel to Dominic Eichler, tend to be both beguiled and surprised. Noemi Smolik's reaction to the white body-part canvases dating from 1998 - before even more surprises were in store - is typical: 'Those who know Baer's early paintings might be struck momentarily speechless by the artist's recent work.'¹

Given Baer's persistent will to wander, this momentary speechlessness is now to be expected at her exhibitions. Yet the reaction, however reasonable, marks a failure in the critical language of art, which continues to view painting in terms