I got out from the U7 at Hermanplatz and quickly found out that I shouldn’t have. So I waited and took the next train to Mehringdamm.
Category: Uncategorized
Due to a fascination of anything that has to do with art, I choose to take a picture of a writing man. Due to that same fascination I didn’t want to paint any more that what primarily has to do with writing. All the other is abstract matter, which explains the low variety colors in the major part.
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Maybe this is another metafor for art (with what I mean things that are manmade without further use), just a very small part of it is essential. While the majority are just accidental side issues like style; catogorisation; value; theory etc.
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As long as the problem of an abscency is solved by the proces of making, nothing else matters. As that what is pictured in this work can be interpreted, this story also doesn’t matter.
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Or maybe it’s just irony that the work that is pictured in the picture above created an absency that is, on it’s turn solved by this story? And that writing this doesn’t look at all like that what is pictured in this painting.
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Next time I’ll paint something easyer, I promis.
Finally! Another painting after a long list of posts on photographs. Not that I mind photography, as long as it’s treated as a medium for recording light to make a registration of it’s manifestation at the moment the picture was taken, nothing more nothing less. It’s just that I would like to see this blog treating painting as it’s main issue. This is because I like looking at a painting than a looking at a picture picture.
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The picture I used to make this painting after is, for instance and to my judgement, is a good picture already and fun to watch. For a second I even thought about scanning and posting it but there are already enough pictures posted here and it wouldn’t make the painting better if it’s shown where it comes from. But what the picture can’t do and this painting can is simply amaze me with what it has become, even while going thru the entire proces of making it.
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First I thought about making this a long story explaining the mediate and immediate differences between painting and photography, but I don’t feel like it at all. If you really want to read a complicated statement on art, painting and what I think I’m doing you can read the artist-statement I wrote yesterday. » Continue Reading…
We were there already for about 2 hours but that didn’t really change the look. Actually it had left for a while but it returned when the rest of our party arrived.
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Back to the advice from the gallerist. Something about it not beeing commercially interesting to make people. Supposedly it’s too confronting to hang a painting in your house that pictures a person. The suggestion was to make people in paintings less recognizable as beeing people. Well, that’s boring. The fun of painting a person is giving it personality beyond the paint. It will be paint anyways so why making it abstract?
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Okay, I’ve abstracted people to the function they had in the composition but than other people asked: What is that red (or bleu rarely yellow) colorfield/square doing there? The only possible answer to that question is that I didn’t feel like painting the person due to a great variety of reasons. It can be because the light on the person rather boring; the person is blurry on the picture; it would draw attention away from what I really like to show or I simply really like to paint a monotome primary colored field on that place in the composition. » Continue Reading…
It was about time.
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Since the last 2 paintings it seemed like I had chosen de Stijl, and only de Stijl, to explore the possibilities of painting with. It’s not a bad choice but one for a very strict and very disciplined expedition to the farthest boundries of reality in paint. Still, after having made these 2 paintings it was very necesairy to paint without any restrictions, even though I consider them necesairy in order to make that what can’t be denied or doubted in paint: a painting, nothing more, nothing less.
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Last week I was at a gallery to see if we could get some cooperation of the ground. I must say it was a very pleasant meeting in which I met somebody who gave a realistic reflection on the choice that I had made, the choice to explore painting thru the principles of de Stijl. What he said was that the use of the imagery from de Stijl was completely justifiable but, without further explaination of my work and/or my person, totally not usable for commercial purposes. This is due to the fact that commercial value depends on a authentic use of image and even though, according to my contact, the imagery in my paintings is authentic, it is not yet recognized as such. This is simply because the features that are part of de Stijl are not recognized as contemporary possibilities but as a thing from the past.
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The solution he came up with was to make my name more well-known and than try it again. But my brother, who studied marketing, said: people just have to get used to it. This sounds more like my kind of game.
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Still, I started this painting because I wanted to take some distance from all principles and enjoy absolute freedom in paint.
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Fuck yeah, I even painted the lens-flare!
What would Piet Mondriaan say about this painting if he’d see it? He stepped out of ‘de Stijl’ movement because of the fact that (one of) the others accepted the use of the diagonal line in their very formal concept for painting. Because of his strict interpretation of the rules that ‘de Stijl’ had set for the new way of painting his work became the best known of the entire movement.
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Personally I agree with this attitude. I am not stating that all has to be caught in rules but when you set your rules, you ought to keep yourself to it. Piet was a hardliner, he kept hisself to his rules and he wouldn’t change then.
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On one side, I agree with the rules Piet set for formal painting to achieve a universal harmony on the other side, it’s clear that when keeping yourself strictly to these rules, you will never be able to reach the entire range of possibilities of painting.
Whenever something is abstract, it leaves not so much to talk about. While I could have told about the subject, in this case a girl on the backseat of a car sitting against the window and looking at the fotographer, me, it could as well have been about somebody who is taking a picture of something or gazing into a wide open landscape while something is closing the composition in the opposing corner. No, when making something abstract the only explaination possible will be in terms of intuition or even worse, and not applicable on my work, emotion.
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The picture used for this painting had no figurative content that affected me, neither it had any easthetics that could interest in the way of light, color and shape. Only the subject affected me emotionally, the girl in the picture is my ex-girlfriend, but since I don’t paint to gush about past loves this did not motivate me to work it out in a figurative manner. Altough until a certain point I did try to. What did interest me was the pure formal composition, of which it was very clear that it would enable me to make a painting with a lot of large plain color-fields. And to give me the possibility to practise with straight lines, sharp edges and borders in a thick layer of wet paint. » Continue Reading…
Her cousin would get married later that day, in order for that to be able to happen she needed something old, new, bleu and borrowed. Don’t ask me what for, it’s an American custom that I first encountered watching and episode of friends. Two of the starring characters where getting drunk somewhere in Las Vegas and ended up getting married. In this case the necklace was one of the items required. Therefor you could encounter this situation in anyplace. The (former) roommate of the bride hangs a necklace round the neck of the bride, this beeing like a sort of good-bye but we’ll be friends -and for sure, cousins- forever.
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But this particular case I was present and as an artist, also carrying my camera so I could capture this moment. It resulted in a picture with the most magnificent light on the back of the shirt. It fitted really good on her, since the girl herself is also one of the brighter, intelligent and openminded people, that particular light seemed to be made for her. And her shirt, which also appeared to be the right shirt for that moment.
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So, what made it a moment? For the answer I need to be really subjective: it was me taking a picture of it. If that wouldn’t have happened, there wouldn’t have been a painting, not this awesome colorfull light, no universal gesture, just a past action.
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To end this story I had a very cool punchline in mind but while writing my mind went to this light; this situation; these colors; this shirt; this girl, and I forgot about the punchline.
He wasn’t asking for it literally, in the way that he could have asked me if I would take a picture of him. But his shirt saying: “I am a conceptual piece of Art” double dared me to kindly ask the guy if I could take a portrait-picture of him. Why I interpreted his t-shirt as a dare to do so, I will explain later. The tourist, in Berlin from Argentina, agreed on condition that his girlfried would also be in the picture. Why not? And I took the picture.
Why than, did I have to take that picture? The reason was the text on his shirt. I consider art to be the most useless kind of thing produced by culture, presenting it to be a very high value for humanity. Don’t you know what to call something don’t even know why it excists but want it to have a certain intrinsic value? Then call it Art. This guy whas obviously a tourist, quite a useless state of beeing I must say and therefor lacking any value to his existance (except some economic value of course). By wearing his t-shirt he attempted to give hisself a greater excistential value than actually the case. By stating that he was a “conceptual piece of Art” he proclaims to have no need to do anything to make it’s excistance usefull on any way, something that I can really respect in somebody. I decided to make this guy from that what his t-shirt said and which he isn’t to something that is just as usefull and has more truth to it: a painting.
I found out that this picture was not far as interesting as I hoped. This caused the painting to go from a picture to a composition and halfway back to the picture before it was finished. For once I had to write on it, just to clearify. » Continue Reading…
As he does every once in a while, Thomas walked into my studio to have a little chat and check out what I am working on. Thomas is one of my roommates, my studio is on the groundfloor of the building that I live in so for him it’s easy to walk in. I can always appreciate it, when he does he’s genuinely interested, he looks around, asks a couple question that are not pretentious (they are not asked to sound interesting or to provoce a complicated answer) and after about 10 minutes of chatting he leaves and I can continue working. I think I could even continue working while he is present in my studio.
Last week, or so, he came in and asked: “Aren’t you afraid that people, who look at your paintings, only think about Mondrian?”.
I have asked myself this question a lot came to the conclusion that I am not afraid of that. Not because I have the illusion that people are not thinking of Mondrian when looking at my work but because I know that there is a very large chance that people do when they see my work.
This does not imply that I would agree on the statement that I am making a contemporary version of Mondrian’s work. No, also Mondrian would not have been able to state that the work he made was made in his style and I believe he would have never made such statement. This for that fact that the imagery he used was not his but the imagery used by those who embraced the ideals of de Stijl: neo-plastisism.
So, why do people think about Mondrian rather than de Stijl or neo-plastisism? This is probably because Mondrian was the most strict in the application of the principles of de Stijl, of all who were involved, (which were discussed in the magazine ‘de Stijl’, edited by Theo van Doesburg) what resulted in the magnificent work he created. Among these principles were that compositions had to be made with the primary colors and black and white and they had to be made orthogonal. Further they believed in the universality of everything and had an utopic believe in progess of the human species in technical, sceintific and social level.
Well now, I also feel very joint with the principles of de Stijl in theoretical sense. The only thing I can not do is apply these principles as strict as Mondrian had done in the practical way. Although I embrace the principles of de Stijl, I am aware of the fact that although everything is universal etc., at the same time I am aware that everything has a particular appearance to the human contiousnes. Until it is common knowledge that everything is universal, it will be needed to explain what this means and what the consequences are and this explaination is, at least for me, not possible in theoretical way. Repeating the fact in theory would not grasp on to ones contiousnes and that’s what art is good for: to form an actual idea from the underlaying theory. The way Mondrian and his consentients attempted to clearify this theory was only abstract, the pure theory. What’s needed to clearify this principle is a brigde that shows lucid, but dynamic like liquid, the world that shows things both universal and particular at the same time. When it’s done the right way, Mondrians paintings shouldn’t be abstract anymore.
Ow, about this painting, it’s not finished yet. At the stage at which this picture was taken I didn’t know what else I could do with the painting/image than translate it into a composition. Of course it’s not finished yet, it couldn’t be, look at how croocked the colorfields are, not even to mention the straight corners and the smushy colors. No, by now already it looks al lot more like I just described above.