Since the 1980s Michael Zahn developed a lasting pictorial and theoretical analysis of the paintings of largely European abstract artists — from Malevich to Yves Klein, the Support/Surface group and BMPT. Michael Zahn combines in his paintings an idiosyncratic approach to this specific art-historical horizon with an analysis of a typically American preoccupation with surfaces, which today he sees expressed first and foremost in the machinations of the personal computer. Zahn’s pictures from the early 1990s initially transformed the binary code of programming languages into abstract sequences of black and white stripes, and recontextualized the devices of Buren and Parmentier within a post-industrial ‘digital’ framework. Untitled (Menu with Sub-Menu) is characterized by a reductive, rhetorical black and white structure, and a minimalist division of surface, with severe lines and bands continuing to the painting’s edges. An unambiguous interpretation of content is no longer possible, as the onlooker is able to grasp the intention through the unusual way the two panels are hung, and by cues provided by the work’s title.