Works from the 25 – 25 IS (2010) on the floor at SNO
(l to r, t to b) Tilman, Tallman, Heerkens, Hallard, Hsiao,
Arts, Voskuil, Winkler, Andrews, Roux, Dahlhausen,
Van Der Graaf, Deleget, Van Der Aa

August 7-29, 2010

Solo Installations
Guido Winkler & Iemke van Dijk

25 -25 IS Box
The 25 – 25 IS box contains work of 25 artists at 25 x25 cm. The edition consists of 75 boxes. Available at 395 EUR / 575 AUD. Participating artists include: Justin Andrews, Linda Arts, Chris Ashley, Sanne Bruggink, Christoph Dahlhausen, Matthew Deleget, Rene Eicke, Billy Gruner, Brent Hallard, Jose Heerkens, Gilbert Hsiao, Arjan Janssen, Sarah Keighery, Alexandra Roozen, Leopoldine Roux, Giles Ryder, Clary Stolte, John Tallman, Tilman, Richard Van Der Aa, Iemke Van Dijk, Jasper Van Der Graaf, Henriette Van ‘t Hoog, Jan Maarten Voskuil and Guido Winkler.

IS Group Show
Participating artists include: Jose Heerkens, Henriette van ‘t Hoog, Arjan Janssen, Jasper van der Graaf and Jan Maartin Voskuil

Douglas Witmer, Fruitville
Mixed media on found wood
Less than 8 inches in any direction

June 20 – July 25, 2010

Some Walls is pleased to present Philadelphia-based artist Douglas Witmer’s exhibition Fruitville.

Douglas Witmer is well known for his paintings which intuitively combine simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of surface physicality. In addition to this widely-shown and growing body of work, for the past several years Witmer has worked on a series small three dimensional pieces using found wood as a support called Fruitville. This exhbition is the first time the Fruitville works have been shown publicly. Witmer has said about this series:

“The Fruitville Pike is a road where I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It’s a major thoroughfare, but it doesn’t go to, from, or through anywhere called Fruitville. My efforts to find Fruitville, if there ever was such a place at all, have been inconclusive.”

So Fruitville exists in my imagination as a kind of Eden; a place of purity, clarity, and quiet delight. It manifests itself in an ongoing visual process of experimentation with wood, paint, glue, paper, ink, light, and shadows. The things that make up my Fruitville exist to be in relationship to the places where they can be seen, and also in relationship with each other.

The sensitive, direct, and quirky color, spatial, and textural qualities that appear in Witmer’s paintings and works on paper are also found in the Fruitville series, continuing his approach to making art that is lush, playful, and deceptively simple, yet rigorous, iconic, and commanding.

Some Walls is a curatorial and writing art project in a private home in Oakland, California. Some Walls is open by appointment only. To view the exhibition online please visit somewalls.com. To schedule a visit, or for more information, please contact Chris Ashley at info@somewalls.com.

Installation view

September 10 – October 31, 2009

Some Walls is a new curatorial and writing art project located in a private home in Oakland, California. For the inaugural exhibition, Some Walls presents “Jeffrey Cortland Jones: Recent Paintings,” from September 10 – October 31, 2009. Images and an essay about the exhibition are at Some Walls.

Jeffrey Cortland Jones is Associate Professor at University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. A painter as well as a curator, he is much admired by peers for his lush and serious work, disciplined and productive practice, broad and active exhibition schedule, and friendly and generous spirit.

Some Walls will show four small recent paintings made with enamel on acrylic panels. Known for his use of industrial materials, institutional colors, complex layering, and vigorous mark-making, Jones had in the recent past used a more wild and vibrant palette. The four paintings in this exhibition head in a slightly different direction, however. Returning to his previous use of green and white, Jones has quickened, reduced, and softened his paint application, resulting in images that, though abstractions with a strong physical presence and object quality, with their vertical format and horizontal spatial divisions hint at the wintery-like atmospheric image of haze just as the sun is about to burst through.

Jeffrey Cortland Jones: Recent Paintings at Some Walls, 2009
Long known for his use of industrial materials, various kinds of paint, institutional colors, and a complex layering of transparent and opaque paint akin to glazing, Jeffrey Cortland Jones had gradually shifted towards a brilliant, vibrant palette, and a vigorous, painterly, graffiti-like approach to mark-making. Recently, however, he returned to his former more subdued color set, and radically reduced and refined the materials used in order to make a large and continuing series of new small paintings, each enamel on 10 x 8 inch acrylic panels. The resulting flat fields, smeared strokes, close contrast, and horizontal divisions, while appearing initially and deceptively simpler than previous work, are confidently abstract, visually evocative and associative, and, despite their size, surprisingly monumental.

In this new work Jones’ painting is quick, soft, flat, and deft. The speed at which Jones makes and completes each painting is rapid and decisive, without hesitation and worry. The four paintings exhibited at Some Walls, all basically green and white, evidence play with paint and ground. Surprisingly, for such small work, the paint is often rapidly applied with large brushes, spread, smoothed, or scrubbed, and sometimes wiped and buffed to expose the clear acrylic ground. In areas where no paint appears on the front, the backside of the acrylic is often painted, adding depth to the frontal plane and changing the color of the side of the panel. The edges and corners of each panel’s front are handled differently: fully covered with paint; or exposed by strokes that pull away from the edge; or built up where a dragged brush spills paint over the edge to form a small lip. When hung, small spacers on the back of each panel push them off the wall one eighth inch or so, adding depth and heft. These small differences, immense to a painter, become significant to the carefully observant viewer. The resulting paintings, intentionally created objects, have a sensitive, physical presence, and are containers of human activity, seeing, and thinking; their presence is a sign of recognition and resolution.

Jones’ approach—the large strokes, the broad effects, working with and incorporating the surface—make the paintings feel larger than they are. Because the objects are painted and physical, and despite a photographic quality, in terms of size and surface, it’s possible to feel that not only one is looking at an image, but that one is also a part of or inside the image. Size is one thing, and scale quite another. Looking at a painting, feeling our body in relation to the object, is one sense of scale, but being inside the image is something else, a more psychological and emotional experience. A shift from seeing size to experiencing scale is why these paintings feel monumental; this is difficult to achieve, especially in a kind of abstract painting where no other form, line, or spatial devices tells the viewer the scale of the image being viewed.

Associative aspects of paintings are useful ways of describing visual and emotional experience. In these paintings the vertical format, horizontal divisions, and cool color hint at the wintery-like atmospherics of haze over a landscape just as the sun is about to burst through. This feeling of faintly seeing into a distance, of wanting to see what is beyond the haze, and the effect of light and atmosphere, is a kind of abstraction, a covering over, of preventing our looking for and latching onto something “real.” It is time-based, keeping us present, watching, and wondering. Although each painting can stand absolutely and successfully alone, as installed here a few inches apart in a single row these paintings interact, like four views of the same place within minutes of each other, almost a time lapse sequence. This is one example of the narrative possibility of a abstract painting, however nonlinear and pre-lingual that narrative may be. But there is little outside of these paintings that can help us understand them more. Our understanding remains in the experience of looking.

In a recent essay, Matthew Collings commented about an exhibition of Robert Motherwell’s “Open,” series of paintings, “I like the way the ‘Opens’ simply refuse any possibility of looking up things in books,[1]” meaning, I take it, that the paintings are intensely visual and abstract, with no other agenda than painting, and are only accessible through observation and interaction. One has nowhere else to turn to figure them out. What Collings admires in Motherwell applies to Jones—the painting is itself.
Jones says, “This work is honestly only about the painting: how its applied; how is sits on the surface; how most of it is matte but then a few moments of gloss hang around the edges; the shift from a cool white to a warm white; its relationship to the wall; what happens with the space between the painting and the wall; etc.[2]” In an excerpt from a recent statement, he tells us, “Painting is simply obsessive, correcting, locating, apprehending, pigment, fog, field, continuous, resistance, painting.[3]” Jones confirms that his making paintings becomes for the viewer a process of participating, observing, and paying attention.

Chris Ashley
Oakland, California
September, 2009

[1] Collings, Matthew.”The Known Unknowns” Modern Painters. London. September 2009. Pages 24-26
[2] Email from the artist to the author, August 25, 2009.
[3] Email from the artist to the author, August 20, 2009.

VIEWLIST is MINUS SPACE’s new online project space where we invite artists and others to curate a visual essay of images. VIEWLIST exhibitions are experimental and usually thematic, and can include art works spanning various time periods, movements, and geographic locations. Exhibitions may also include ideas and images from disciplines outside of the visual arts. With VIEWLIST, we’ve created a venue that focuses exclusively on ideas, a kind of idealized curatorial space, where exhibition budgets, loans and acquisitions of art works, timelines, and all other logistics are set aside.

Our third viewlist exhibition is conceived by New York painter Karen Schifano.

 

Bulletin Board: Inspiration Information*
Thoughts on Inspiration
Conceived by Karen Schifano

The word “inspire” (originally meaning “to infuse with breath”) is a verb, but can also transform itself into a noun or adjective. It’s very active, and yet also implies being receptive, even demands openness, a readiness to receive, and a sharpening of perception and awareness. From one thing, there is a direct connection to another thing, a kind of touch that is nurturing, rich and full of promise. Potential becomes realization; we wake up rejuvenated, re-energized, and ready for action.

This group of inspirational flotsam and jetsam from our homes and studios is incredibly varied, running the gamut from a poetic quote to the restoration of a house, from the image of a computer desktop to strips of colored tape on a wall. In some instances, there’s a surprising leap from the image seen here to the finished work, in others there is a clear and recognizable relationship. I hope that as you are intrigued by an image, you will click on it to reveal the caption or thoughts of the artist, and then go to the individual websites linked to each name. Through a dialogue about how the mysterious process of getting from A to B or even Z unfolds for each of us, new avenues of search can open up, and we can be re-inspired by this “Inspiration Information”.

* by Shuggie Otis

 

Participating Artists (left to right, row by row):

Stephen Maine | Richard Bottwin | Paul Corio

Joanne Mattera | Kevin Finklea | Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery

Linda Arts | Erik Saxon | Henry Brown

Rory MacArthur | Melanie Crader | Matthew Deleget

Daniel Argyle | Li-Trincere | Chris Ashley

Linda Francis | Sylan Lionni | Shinsuke Aso

Douglas Melini | Brent Hallard | Lynne Harlow

Guido Winkler | Michael Zahn | Karen Schifano

Lynne Eastaway | Daniel Göttin | Simon Ingram

Daniel Feingold

 

Installation view

June 27 – September 26, 2009

Freestyle or The art of surfing the abstract wave

Tilman’s latest monochromes, whether one-off or in series, have an askew look to them; they would appear to have broken with geometric abstraction, with the purism of primary colours and with self-reference. While there is a hint of the shaped canvases of Ellsworth Kelly, in fact the syncopated silhouettes and acid tones of these Freeforms spontaneously evoke the dynamic lines and pure colours of the distorted American cartoon images of the mid-fifties.

In other recent works Tilman appears to have distanced himself from the tradition of constructivism and minimalism with which he is often associated. In 13.08 (Pink Champagne) (2008), although the rectangular structure is maintained, the bottom right-hand module of this light pink quadriptych sinks inwards towards the wall, creating a discontinuity reminiscent of the virtual circuit of a video game. The superposed elements of 14.08 (Urban Structure I) (2008) are reminiscent of a composition from the early days of neo-plasticism but the chromatic impurity of the white dispels any doubt. The irony peaks in Splice (2008): two hybrid monochromes precariously propped up one against the other have no wall support and no front view as such, as they are painted both front and back, one of them looking rather like a sandwich filled with slices of paint. Worth noting ‘en passant’ is the title, which is derived from the film editing term ‘to splice’. And what about the series Stacks that uses the same principle as Donald Judd in his works with the same title but inflicts on them sugary tones and a pleasurable sense of accumulation verging on disorder?

So yes, Tilman glides coolly over the shadow cast by modernism, drawing free forms, supposedly abstract but always reinvented. If he avoids the traps of formalism, it is because part of his work process, albeit fundamentally influenced by the non-objective avant-garde starting with De Stjil then Bauhaus, is anchored in real life. The artist stresses that his work is intuitive and that there is no mathematics involved; also that he uses images registered during city walks. The strong visual impact of ‘a huge pink shape consisting of isolation panels mounted on the outside brick wall of a building under construction’ (1) was a motive force in the execution of this relaxed abstraction, which unashamedly runs through a whole range of pastel colours, including some sublime pinks…

This freestyle surfing of the non-objective also enables Tilman to introduce the experience of space into his painting by using structures that oscillate between sculpture and architecture, as in The House of Colors. Stemming from a reflection on floor objects, this unidentified modular object may be three-dimensional and have the feel of a hypothetical utopian construction but it is none the less a work of painting. Its size rules it out as a maquette but nor does it have the physical dimensions or indeed the functional purpose of architecture. Composed of multicoloured rectangular sections interlocked like a giant set of lego the work acts as a sort of observatory with multiple peepholes. The public is invited to experiment and look through this multi-angle viewfinder, not unlike the optical devices invented by painters down through the centuries, from the camera lucida to the camera obscura.

Tilman’s work is primarily about exploring the effect of light on forms and colours — visually, physically and psychologically. We should not forget that, quite apart from the fact that the artist comes from Munich and was influenced by the subtle half-tones of baroque painting, he started out in photography. In one of his catalogues entitled Look Awry (Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, 12 May – 25 June 2006), Tilman urged the public to look at his constructions ‘awry’. Playing on the word’s double meaning this could also be understood as an injunction to look at the work ‘askew’. The ‘defects’ or lopsidedness in Tilman’s painting, with its slight dissonance of forms and colours tinged with humour but ultimately extremely elegant, clearly confer a human dimension on the work, transforming what is an art to look at into a space of experience.

–Catherine Macchi de Vilhena

(1) Tilman, Interview Tilman and Chris Ashley, May – June 2006.

 

Chris Ashley, Jukebox 1-28 (detail), 2007
Inkjet prints

June 6 — July 27, 2007

 

January 10 — February 10, 2007

Artists Chris Ashley (Oakland, CA) and Douglas Witmer (Philadelphia, PA) are mounting an exhibition of collaborative works on paper.  And they have been cataloguing their collaborative process online.  Check it out.

introduction
Tilman has stated that his art has completely moved into the three-dimensional realm, and that his use of and response to architecture requires finding a balance between various environments and the objects that he makes and situates in these environments.  Inspired by everyday objects and structures, his goal is to present and represent light using color and form, which is mediated through the objects he makes, the structures in which the objects are located, and the overall integrated installation.  As René Kockelkorn writes about Tilman’s exhibition F218B-BXL, at CCNOA, Brussels in 2004, “in short, this is not merely an art to look at, but a physical and psychical space of experience.”

In the following interview the reader will find the word location used several times, and there are two instances where this word is extended to locational and locationality.  In reference to a pink shape he saw on the side of a building in New York which later influenced an art work of his, Tilman says, “somehow it caught my eye and I was fascinated by its awkward shape and color, and also its locational relationship.”  It wasn’t merely the pink shape that mattered, but also the place where it was situated and what surrounded it.  And in our discussion about site-specific and installation art, he says, “a work which is truly site-specific for me is a work which is locationally immanent, if one can say this, rather than a work which can be transported to any other location.” 

In particular, I am very fond of his use of the word “immanent” here, meaning indwelling; inherent; or all-pervading, which perhaps even carries a sense of transcendence.  “Locationally immanent” would mean that something is where it is meant to be, and that it can’t be anywhere else.  Much of what Tilman attempts in his recent work is the use objects and color to create situations that feel natural and original, yet are structured and heightened places in which the viewer experiences form and light; one might call these immanent locations.

—Chris Ashley, June 2006

 

The following conversation between Tilman and Chris Ashley was conducted via email in English between April and May 2006.  For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.

 

Chris Ashley: Your work F218B-BXL installed at CCNOA, Brussels in 2003 incorporated video and sound by Johan Vandermaelen.  What was your thinking about including environmental sound in your installation?  Is this the first time that you’ve included other media in an installation of yours, and is it something you intend to do again?

 

Tilman: F 218 B-BXL was the first site-specific installation; its basic aim was to create a dialogue between certain elements in my work, but also of perception itself.  I found it interesting to include also various media into my process to add another layer of possible perceptive momentum.  Sound, for example, became by bits an architectural structure and yet another element in these rooms on the same level as maybe a flat wall work.  It definitely is not meant as an atmospheric addition.

 

CA: During 2006 you have three solo exhibitions scheduled in Oslo, Dusseldorf, and Sydney.  Can you tell me about the work you will be showing in these different locations, how the work is different or the same, and if these different cities affect either the work you are showing or the installation?

 

T: Oslo is a rather involved project.  The show will contain seven stacked and layered wall objects, two floor objects and one large floor/wall object.  All works are made for the space, some beforehand in my Brussels studio, and the large objects here in Oslo, on-site.  The other gallery space will be occupied by a large installation similar to F 218 B-BXL.  This installation will also contain different media, like video and a sound piece by Belgian composer Aernoudt Jacobs, who composed this piece especially for this space and installation.

The show in Dusseldorf will be hosted by a rather small gallery, Konsortium, and in this venue I will show drawings and one wall object deriving from those drawings.  The series of drawings is called Fundstueck/gridworks, and is based on an object my eyes caught in New York two years ago—a mimetic relation, maybe.

The SNO (Sydney Non Objective) show later this year will most probably be a site-specific installation, due to the location and also due to the practicality—Sydney is a bit far away.  But no specific plans are made yet for this show.

In general I could say that a special location does not influence my work in particular, except that by traveling far distances to have exhibitions I got into working site-specifically and also more experimental lydue to this situation, a flexibility which I had to get acquainted with first, but now I feel very confident with this process of art-making; the post-studio thing, to maybe call it, helped me in some ways in the creative act and broadened my ways of approaching and dealing with the process of making a work of art.

 

CA: What was it that caught your eye in New York on which you based these drawings?  Do you often get ideas like this from your environment?  Is much of your work based on other objects or something in the environment?

 

T: That specific image I detected in New York was actually a huge pink shape consisting of isolation panels mounted on the outside brick wall of a building under construction, and somehow it caught my eye and I was fascinated by its awkward shape and color, and also its locational relationship.  But it is not that I am specifically looking for images like this—they just occur, and if they are strong enough, they find their way slowly into the process.  So I am trying to say that especially the architectural objects are not entirely dependent on this process of seeing.  This also can happen by working on drawings and making sort of loose sketches, especially when it comes to larger artworks.  But yes, I cannot deny a relationship to daily life objects, or at least the impulse I get from looking at things, objects, and my environment.

 

CA: Let’s talk about this idea of the “post-studio” practice, a not uncommon practice for many artists now.  I see a breakdown of art that is made in the studio, or made outside the studio, or is half-and-half.  There are artists who don’t have a studio beyond, say, a laptop, and who work with teams or fabricators.  Can you say more about this, and how it broadens your practice?  You’re still working in a studio, too, so are these approaches ever really separate, or is it more porous, something shifting back and forth?

 

T: “The world becomes the studio”—this is a line used by a New Zealand-based art critic, and I can definitely relate to this quote.  So in my case, this became an issue after being invited to places like Australia, or in cases of working with art-spaces that run on a low budget.  The works I execute then are usually made site-specific, or I find a place where I can continue the regular studio practice, so in this case I can set up a temporary studio wherever I want.  Maybe the idea of working in one place—the studio—is a very romantic idea in these times and days, and then may be one day it becomes important again.  The intimacy of the studio is still important, so to say, but also the flexibility of location, time and space are a big part of my working process, without interfering with the essential idea of my work.

 

CA: The literature about your work and your own statements emphasize your interest in color and light.  Your realization that light and color were your main concerns came over time, and through painting, and in some ways you are still involved in painting, but also sculpture.  I’m curious to know about why and how you make solid colored objects in order to get at the effects of light.  What result are you after in setting up for the viewer a situation where light is made with objects?

 

T: I guess my early interests in light stem from my concern for photography, which developed very young, also always painting at the same time.  Working with photography ended basically in doing very experimental photos about movement of light.  Photography seemed not the right tool for me then, and I turned to painting to explore light and its essential visual quality.  Sure, for a long time I literally painted and tried to paint/catch light, and through years of working and researching in different modes and styles (bad word, I know), I arrived very slowly at a much-reduced form to give light its platform.  So in this term, I understand my works of art as more carriers for existing light, and they can be flat, three dimensional art arranged in an installation.  A strong point in this mode of working is to invite the viewer to participate in this physical experience, to look and understand the subtleties of light and the objects and, in general, I think this can also spur more philosophical or even psychological points of understanding than the work of art might offer at first sight.

 

CA: What do you see as the philosophical and psychological aspects of experiencing and understanding your work?  Perception of light and color are primary experiences in your work, and these take place through certain forms.  These forms are hung or installed in specific ways, and may be integral to an architectural setting, perhaps bearing the influence of architecture.  We are all familiar with and can deeply experience architectural spaces—we move through them, live in them, work in them.  Our experience of space, and much of our lives, is shaped by architecture, and color and light.  In “The Poetics of Space,” Gaston Bachelard applies the method of Phenomenology to examine our experience of architecture, looking closely at various kinds of shapes and spaces.  Some of our experience is less conscious, even automatic, but at some point we become more aware of our interactions with various kinds of spaces.  Our reactions are at first physical, gradually turning to awareness and meaning—which might be a psychological recognition—and then as we process this it becomes an idea or an ideal, entering the realm of philosophy.  Our looking translates into an intellectual process and vice-versa, and it can be a very interesting process.  How does your art act in the continuum from the physical, to the psychological, to the philosophical?

 

T: I find your reference to Bachelard`s book very interesting.  Once I bought this book, about a half a year ago, but didn’t yet find time to focus on it.  The short rundown on Bachelard`s thoughts and ideas definitely reflects some subjects I am dealing with in my work, although I am missing subjects like personal physicality, sensuality and above all the factors of time, but, well, I haven’t read it yet.  Also, he is maybe more referring to the architectural space compared to the architectural/intimate space of a work of art.  For me, those questions evolved over a period of time, and the observations I made regarding the viewer’s act of seeing.  Once my works developed into three-dimensional objects I observed that most of the viewers still perceived those works as two-dimensional works, which deeply irritated me and raised a lot of questions about perception.  I then introduced those rather small boxes, called Volumina, and besides their own autonomy as works of art they also helped to seduce the viewer into another act of seeing and perception.  The viewer all of a sudden understood the three-dimensionality of the other works—looking behind, creating a curiosity—and once being three-dimensional those works created also a physicality within the viewer, which led to questions of psychology and, last but not least, philosophy.  There is sure more to say towards that subject, but maybe you get an idea of what I am aiming for.

 

CA: There are other artists with a strong psychological and philosophical foundation, who also deal with light and color.  How do you see your work in terms of the history of other artists for whom pure color and light are central, for example Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin, or James Turrell?

 

T: Well, I think history is long and there are many artists I am interested in from Renaissance to today, and I think this is a quite complex question.  The three names you mention are sort of tied into Minimalism, and sure I respect their work in their own form of dealing with the phenomena of light, but I do not understand myself as a Minimalist.  There are certainly thoughts which I am very interested in, and also a certain aesthetic, but I wouldn’t nail down my approach to them.  A very strong influence was a rather unknown artist who died recently, Robert Fosdick, and maybe also Belgian artist Marthe Wéry, who also died last year.  I can definitely say that there is a tradition in my language of art starting more precisely maybe with De Stijl and Bauhaus, for example.

 

CA: Can you say a little more about Fosdick and Wéry, their work, and their influence?

 

T: As for my friend Robert Fosdick, I have to say that it wasn’t necessarily the actuality of his individual works, it was the ideas he gave me about, let’s say, possibilities for understanding the subtleties of light.  Deeply embedded in the dialogue between the realistic, scientific understanding of the natural phenomena of light itself, and on the other side a philosophical, spiritual approach towards it, the conversations with him supported my own development and triggered a manifold of questions in me.

As for Marthe Wéry, I guess we met just like that, a deep understanding in what we were both after in terms of physicality and intellect, the relationship between an art object and its function in architectural space, the importance of light as a mending plate between those entities, an almost sensoround experience, the questions of one’s own physicality, one’s own physical position—where do we stand?

 

CA: Going back to Minimalism, in his well-known essay “Art and Objecthood,” first published in “Artforum” in June 1967, Michael Fried used the word “theatricality” to describe, and criticize, Minimalism’s phenomenon of an object or form in real space experienced in real time.  This attribute eventually came to have many positive connotations.  When I mentioned Irwin, Flavin, and Turrell, I wasn’t really thinking of your work as Minimalism; I asked about them because light and perception are central to your work.  But now, given your use of installation, I’m wondering whether or not you incorporate this “theatrical” aspect of installation into your work.

 

T: I think the term “theatrical” in this respect is theatrical in itself, and also maybe the term “installation” is wrong to describe those spaces I create.  They are clearly site-specific in their nature, which I think installation art is not.  The spaces I create are clearly connected to its location.  They never can be set up again in the same manner once they are standing in an important dialogue with its architectural environment and the existing light conditions.  I do not understand the architectural environment as a setting or stage in that sense.

 

CA: How is it possible that an installation is not site-specific?  I wonder if what you mean is that installation art doesn’t have to be site-specific.  It is dependent on the location, which can change each time the work is installed, in different conditions.  Regarding your work, do you mean that the architectural environment in which you install your work is not a backdrop or a platform, but is integrated into something larger— the entire work would include your objects or interventions, plus the environment?

 

T: Sure, all installations are in some way site-specific; I just wanted to draw a line there between installation and site-specific, which you actually answered with the second part of your question regarding this subject.  A work which is truly site-specific for me is a work which is locationally immanent, if one can say this, rather than a work which can be transported to any other location and re-installed in a maybe slightly different configuration within any given space.

 

CA: Much of your work certainly shares the essential characteristics of de Stijl: pure abstraction; a reduction to essential form and color; an emphasis on vertical and horizontal, and individual, discrete works.  The Bauhaus’ key characteristics are architecture and function, and the philosophy that the practice of art is situated in a greater totality.  How do you see your work in relation to this?

 

T: I guess there is definitely a relation to those thoughts.  Josef Alber’s quote that “art shall open eyes” is also very important in the bigger picture to make art accessible.  And I truly believe that the idea of reduction and the search for the subtleties in reductive art can open doors for understanding the bigger picture in a visual, physical, intellectual way.  This art is not aiming to be self-contained; it wants to relate, to give, to breathe.

 

CA: Do you arrive at the format and sizes of your work intuitively, or are proportion and numbers important drivers for your work?

 

T: My process of working is usually a very loose one, very intuitive.  I seldom work on proper sketches although, sure, when it comes to large-scale works I have to sort of plan them out.

But there’s no math or any relation to math involved.  I could say more that there is a definite relationship to architecture and building and creating spaces.  The objects actually could be described as micro-architectures, and I also believe there’s a sort of architecture, or maybe better structure, in the chaotic, incidental appearance of things which constantly find their way into our eyes.

 

CA: The idea of micro- and incidental architecture is interesting.  For example, a work like 4103, which is a small box open on the top and bottom hung high on a wall near the ceiling could be initially taken for a sign, or a fire alarm, or some kind of sensor or detector.  What look like large colored sheets of fiberboard in E472C-BSL lean against the wall or are propped up off the floor on small planks, like sections of wall waiting to be installed.  The stacked pieces in F218B-BXL are placed like construction materials that have just been delivered to a site, ready to be used.  Elements : Squares are like colorful aluminum window frames on display at a home design convention.  Besides the forms you use, I think I see in your use of color a connection to very contemporary, popular architecture.

 

T: I think there is definitely a connection in my works to architectural space in general, as a physical space in relation to one’s own physicality and its relation to it: what do we see, where are we standing, what is going on?  There are those kinds of thing around us, those relationships, to discover and see.  Things that look awry are the concerns of this work.  As for the use of color, I don’t really know whether there is a direct connection to architecture.  In architecture, yes, color gets used in many different aspects—as form, as decoration, etc.  In my work color functions under a very different umbrella—it is light.

 

CA: The color is material, first.  It could be the natural color of the material, or painted, or printed, or the color is applied in some way.  It’s a property of the object.  Of course, color is made possible by light, but how does the color move from being a physical thing to being simply light?

 

T: In early Greek philosophy, light is described as the fourth element, the ether; they called it Olkas, a carrier which holds all together.  That’s what I am trying to say with simply light, making a reference to this thought.  So color, yes, as a material it becomes a carrier of thought, something essential, so to say.

 

CA: After all of these exhibitions, what next?

 

T: Well, first of all I need a break, but in general I might say that I haven’t played out all the possibilities which my work process offers.  After all, it is slow, art, and I cannot just produce, period.  So I guess I will keep on researching my own possibilities.

introduction
It seems somehow appropriate to me that Daniel Göttin’s recent wall works — those in which lines of tape placed on a wall are used to make a large, dense web of intersecting lines — are called Networks.  Over a two-month period Daniel and I talked about his art via electronic messages relayed back and forth across a complex network of thousands of miles of cable between Basel, Switzerland and Northern California.  He could write to me in the evening, and I would receive his message moments later in the morning, a kind of time travel.  My job was easier than Daniel’s—we wrote to each other in my native English, rather than his native German, and I got to ask all of the questions, then sit back and wait for his reply.

As we sent questions and answers back and forth, and also exchanged pleasantries and observations, our conversation began by meandering from point to point, gradually establishing different nodes of reference.  Over time an order was recognized, and the conversation was eventually shaped and contained within the boundaries of the interview format.  In doing this we responded to a situation and found a form within it.  Similarly, I recall how in our discussion Daniel described his process when making site-specific works, and it occurs to me that his work is also a conversation, but one that takes place with materials and spaces that involve time, various distant locations, perhaps negotiations with bureaucracies, and a flexible and open language.

Just as how in our interview Daniel speaks with extreme clarity and thoughtfulness, his art also possesses these qualities.  But this clarity is not the result of a fixed or repetitive position or strategy.  Instead, his art is iterative, responding to changing conditions and environments.  Different aspects of his work, both the works made on the wall and the objects made for the wall, are inter-related and work off of and reflect on each other.  There is a wholeness to what Daniel refers to as an entity—his body of work.

—Chris Ashley, February 2006

 

The following conversation between Daniel Göttin and Chris Ashley was conducted via email in English between December 2005 and February 2006.  For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.

 

Chris Ashley: Daniel, your work can be roughly divided into two groups: site specific work and colored or painted objects for walls.  The site specific works for interior walls are typically made with paint and tape, and you make works for exterior walls, too.  You also make painted objects for the wall out of aluminium or MDF, and sometimes free-standing objects.  Can you talk about the difference between these two kinds of art?

 

Daniel Göttin: The difference between these two kinds of art is a difference of location and condition.  The starting-point for a site specific work is the space with its specific qualities where the work will be installed.  I use the given information (for example, plans, photos, sketches) to create a work that co-exists with the space.  It is a collaboration between the given, already existing part of the site and the new part I add to the site.  The idea is to combine the already existing with the new into an entity in time and space.  The work only exists in and simultaneously with the space, and both become active parts of the art work having equal rights.  It is not possible to move one of them to another place—its existence is unique.  The works made of aluminium, MDF and other materials are works I produce either in the studio or I let them (or parts of them) be produced in a factory.  In many cases it is again collaboration, this time with the factory worker.  This changes the conditions.  I don’t need a site but the studio to make the work, and the number and sizes of the works are limited.  The works made in the studio don’t depend on a specific site, but on the conditions of technical possibilities of production.  They are movable, and they can be shown in different places.  Since I am switching between the two kinds of art mentioned, they are still parts of a broader entity.

 

CA: How would you define this broader entity, which I assume is your overall concern (or concerns) as an artist under which all your work falls?

 

DG: The broader entity is the view of the world in general.  Art is one aspect besides many others.  It is about art and life.  It is not so much about art itself as one entity and life as another entity, seen besides each other.  It is, rather, a permanent mutual influence.  Art can be a way of living, and life can be artistic.  Art is not necessarily only painting (like most people think), or sculpture, or something else in the field of art.  To me it can be anything I see or define as art.  It is a free field without boundaries.  It is about the conciousness of how someone perceives something: the world; the far; the near; the broad; the detail.

Usually art happens in the context of a gallery, a museum, or in places pre-defined for art.  In these places the work shown is defined as art because of the context.  It can also be challenging making art in a place which is not defined for art.  Then art plays on the same level as anything else; it connects with life.

 

CA: Besides showing in Europe you have also shown quite a bit in Japan and Australia.  How have those opportunities come about?

 

DG: These opportunities came about through the universal language of art as I understand it.  Also, as a two-way system communicating between two equal parts, the existing and the new, the known and the unknown, the seen and the not seen.

 

CA: Do you find that working in different locations—different cities and counries—greatly affects the work that you produce there?  Of course, you find various materials in different places, so there is that affect, but I wonder if there are other influences that are specific to the  location in which you’re working, for example, language, light, geography, pace of life, etc.  How do these affect a work that you produce on-site?

 

DG: Installing and producing in different locations certainly has an affect on my work.  Sometimes I consciously include aspects of the local situation into my work, and sometimes I only realize the influence later.  Thinking and working is about connecting and relating to the site where a work is made or installed.  Being aware of the location or the site is part of the concept.

For example, in Australia the light is so incredibly intense that it changes the color range of some of my works.  In Marfa, the presence of Donald Judd’s work and some of his artist friends’ work is so strong, and so sensitively, precisely and carefully installed in the context of the natural environment and everyday life, that it sharpens the perception and the conciousness of how to work with material, proportion and space.  In Japan, the visual and architectural language had some effect on a concept for a tape work I executed there.  The work turned out to be a European-Japanese combination.  My artist residency in New York last year was different again.  On the one hand, there was living and working on the edge of Soho and Chinatown, between East and West, in this fast, big business, art metropolis.  On the other hand, the experience of all the waste, and all the low budget projects, made me work in a more improvised way, with leftover cardboard, for example, and even taking up photography.

Since one location is remote and quiet, and the other is busy, fast and loud, different locations have different effects on my work.  A beautiful landscape, a vast night sky, the incredible ocean, friendly people, interesting discussions, great art, cultural offerings, a good restaurant, a nice bar, a fun time— everything is part of the experience.  All of these specific qualities in different conditions and in each location is a challenge for new work.  I adapt my concepts and myself to the new situation.  My cultural background connects with the background of the new location.  This is what makes a site specific art work possible.

 

CA: In an interview around the time of your Chinati residency you said, “I use normal materials.  They’re not expensive.”  You also said, “I don’t do things that anyone else couldn’t do; but I DO them.”  If these words were taken out of context it might make your work sound somewhat ordinary or simplistic, which it isn’t.  An important distinction between doing and not doing something creative or meaningful is actually “doing” it—taking action  How did you arrive at using the materials you use, and how do you go about making a site specific work?  You have referred to making “interventions“, and I would assume that time—or, perhaps, the time given to make a work— is a factor in how a work comes about.

 

DG: The Chinati residency was a good opportunity to use everyday material, since there was no other (art) material to get at that time in remote Marfa.  I made a site-specific work from material I could find in town, again working with the given conditions.  I got white cardboard boxes (with no printing on them) from the post office down the road, and some clear adhesive tape from a small supermarket called Wynn’s at that time.  Since the Southern Pacific Railroad impressively divided the small town in front of my studio every day, it made sense to me to include rocks from beside the railroad tracks for the work.  All these materials were within a mile’s distance—I just brought them back for a temporary artwork.  Normal, everyday material means material that is only valid in its usual context.  And doing means to materialize an idea, to make it exist in the real world.  An artist residency gives me the chance to spend some time in a foreign place.  It is interesting and challenging to visit a new place and find out what I can do without having a plan.  Everything is new: the people I meet; the location; the way of living and the way of making art.  I use the time I spend in a new place for creating a work that is related to the whole situation and its conditions.  This is the source, a point-zero combined with my previous experience.  The conditions can have a strong influence on the work, as well as on life.  This leads to a way of working that enables me to make art work in any situation.  I would like to make art works of any size, of any material, in any place.  Conditions can be, for example, time, location, space, materials, language, impressions, and money.

 

CA: What are the criteria by which you can determine that a temporary, site-specific work produced under these conditions (newness, foreignness, time limits) is successful?  Can you give an example of a wall work that you thought was particularly successful, and explain why it was successful?

 

DG: One temporary work I made in 1994 in Switzerland was an allover tape work in a big factory, at that time used as a cultural center with guest studios.  It was a beautiful space, but the view had been blocked by many movable walls, and a lot of things were lying around for a long time.  I decided to take out all the walls to empty the space and to clean the floor.  Then I mounted horizontal bands of black adhesive tape onto three outer walls, and also horizontal bands of clear tape around three sides of the freestanding inner coloumns.  The whole space only changed a bit, but it was the first time visitors could see the space itself in a new way, only slightly changed.  

Another work I made was in 1998 at the newly opened Kunsthaus Baselland.  It was the very first exhibition there, and I had the chance to use the whole basement space to make one big installation.  The idea was to introduce the space itself to the visitors.  I made a concept for all the walls and the floor using black adhesive tape in different widths, clear tape, and green artificial carpet.  

A third exhibiton I made in 2001 was at the Haus für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst in Zürich (now called Haus Konstruktiv, in a new place).  This place is the heart of the first, second and contemporary generation of Schweizer Konstruktivismus and Konkrete Kunst—Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse, Verena Loewensberg, Fritz Glarner, Camille Graeser, Hansjörg Glattfelder, Beat Zoderer, and others.  I decided to paint the walls of four spaces in four different colours, and put an allover network of black adhesive tape entirely across each of the walls.  The first space was painted green, and I placed a Le Corbusier sofa from the office of the museum onto a blue artificial carpet.  A small radio stood in the corner playing a daily program.  The second space was painted yellow and was left empty.  The third space was painted orange with the model of the new museum standing on a blue carpet as well.  The last space was painted pink, and visitors had the possibility to see images of the renovation of the new museum on a computer, which was also standing on a blue carpet.

These three examples are installation works dealing with a real situation, time factors, and artistic and non-artistic conditions.  If I can say each was successful, it was maybe because of the treatment of the whole situation, and an unusual use of usual industrial materials in a subtle way.

 

CA: There are of course precedents for site-specific wall works.  Probably the two most important contemporary figures noted for their wall installations beginning in around 1968 are Blinky Palermo and Sol Lewitt; each is noted for his handling of space and his process for working, and the resulting work cannot easily be called painting, sculpture, architecture, or even decoration.  In 1979 an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago called “Wall Painting” included Robert Ryman, Marcia Hafif, Lucio Pozzi, Richard Jackson, and Robert Yasuda; this exhibition seems apart from your approach since it primarily focused on moving  painting from the canvas to the wall.  Currently, David Tremlett makes large wall drawings using imagery and color inspired by his travels.  Jan van der Ploeg, your contemporary, makes wall paintings that have a conceptual basis and which, I think, seem to flirt with a Pop-influenced, neo-Modernist decoration.  Even earlier are the examples of Schwitters and El Lissitzky’s “Prounen Raum.”  And of course, there is also the long history of frescos and murals.  How do you see your work in this history?  What are some of the concerns that you share with these artists, and what do you see as unique to your work?

 

DG: The concern that I share with many of these artists is the fact that the wall is not only a wall to which the work is applied; it is an active part and support of the work at the same time.  Many wall works stay in line with being a painting on the wall not linked to the site.  The wall remains the background for the painting with its motiv coming from somewhere else.  Architectural-spatial specialties and details are more hidden or covered rather than consciously included.  I see the unique part of my work in the presence of the existing wall including details (doors, switches, plugs, tubes, and other irritations) and the motiv at the same time.  It is what I would call concrete.  The way of reading the work is reading one thing.  The existing wall makes the work visible, the work makes the existing wall visible, and seeing both simultaneously makes the artwork visible.  One of the concepts I am using since 2000 is a myriad of adhesive tape lines I attach directly to a wall or floor, one line after the other.  It’s the idea of doing something the same or similar, step by step, again and again.  The making itself can be monotonous, repetitive, meditative, interesting, boring, like an everyday job.  It’s again doing instead of not doing, and after a while one sees something appearing while the labour itself disappears.  The work becomes independent and self-evident, normal as a table, a door, a real thing.  The difference between high and low is gone.

 

CA: The image made with tape in these wall works isn’t planned ahead, but you make it on-site in response to the wall as you encounter it.

 

DG: The recent wall works (Networks, since 2000) made with adhesive tape are based on a flexible concept.  There are a few things I plan ahead concerning the site.  The image is roughly planned as a starting-point.  With the execution of the work I get additional information from the site, which sometimes requires a change or an adaption.  I start working somewhere by mounting the tape directly to the wall.  Then a door, a window, a pipeline, a staircase and so forth blocks the flow of the work, and it forces me to respond.  This influence can change the rhythm and direction of the work.  Therefore the work links with the site directly.  This work will be different from the last one or the next one.  The continuity is in the similarity and in the difference of both the works and the sites.

 

CA: Some of your wall works cover a complete wall from side to side and floor to ceiling, and others are framed on the wall, separate from the edges.  My initial feeling about this is that a covered wall becomes an enveloping environment, whereas one that does not extend to the edges of a wall is framed somewhat like a picture on a wall.  How do you see these differences?

 

DG: Yes, it’s different.  The allover work uses the whole size and architecture of a wall or a space.  A framed work is usually built in relation to the proportions of the site, too, but the focus and the visual reading is different.  The framed work focuses the view inside the frame, where the wall is part of the work, and outside the frame is the support.  The allover work spreads in all directions; there is no focus, and the wall is a part of the work and the support at the same time.  In some installations I combine both systems—convergent and divergent views.

 

CA: Do you use a wall as you find it, or do you prepare the wall?  Do you change the color or surface texture?

 

DG: The quality of a wall or floor is part of the conditions I mentioned above.  I try to accept a space as it is at first sight.  The quality of a wall is a given; there is no reason to change it.  A dirty wall with spots, holes or scratches is site-specific; I like to include these tracks.  I make the experience so that the mounted (especially black) adhesive tape freshens up the wall as a whole spatial situation; visitors many times think that the wall has been pre-painted.  It is not the idea of a pure art work I make; it’s more a kind of collaboration between the existing and the new.  Ilya Kabakov talks about the total installation, which in my mind is a special case, since the work denies the existing space many times (dark spaces), as do some of James Turrell’s installation works, in a similar way.  It takes the viewer away from the real space he is in.  That is what I try not to do.

 

CA: One of the difficult things I would think your wall works force you to confront is the delicate balance between art and decoration, especially when a wall work is in a more public space as opposed to a space that is recognizable as a context for art.  I’m reminded of this by the Christine Mehring paper “Decoration and Abstraction in Blinky Palermo’s Wall Paintings” (Grey Room 18, Winter 2004).  What are your thoughts about art versus decoration?  Do you care about this?  Are there things that you do in the work to steer the viewer towards one way of seeing or the other?

 

DG: My concern is to build a concrete visual identification for a site, created by an art work linked to the site to evoke a situation in reality that can make sense there.  The aspects of the site influence the concept I develop.  I am interested in a work that makes the site visible through the art work, and the site makes the art work visible at the same time.  It is about the consciousness of perceiving something.  It is a communication, a give and take between equal parts creating a new, balanced entity.  It is a two-way system, different from a one-way system or a non-linked idea projected onto a so-called neutral ground, which I would understand as decoration.

 

CA: You seem to use images in the wall works and the objects that have aspects in common.  You have recently used what you call a “diamond” shape in both the wall works and the objects; it’s a four-sided shape, and sometimes it looks like a square in perspective.  Also, the objects that you have made that look like skewed crosses seem like details from the wall works where two taped lines cross at an angle.  Is this a relevant observation?  Is this a common practice for you?

 

DG: Yes, some details of a work can develop into an independent new work sometimes.  Since I like to work with basic and simple geometric forms the field is limited.  The limitation enables me to use a language with similar forms, patterns or grids in different ways.  Many times it is playing and reflecting between the same, the similar, and the different, making distinctions visible.  I usually work simultaneously on different projects.  The public works or commissioned works have specific demands.  Other works I make without a specific connection to a site, but connected between different types of my works.  It is working in a two-way system, which is reflected in work made in new ways or from a new point of view.  A prolific communication takes place between my various works.  It shows several aspects, and results in my art work as an allover entity.

 

CA: You don’t call the objects you make paintings, right? When you make these objects do you have more options than the industrial materials you use for the wall installations?  In particular, I wonder if you have more choices in terms of color, support, and surface than you do for the wall works.

 

DG: Since my background is closer to three dimensional work — sculpture and architecture — than painting, I would rather call the works objects, though some of them are very close to painting, or even are paintings.  Many of the works are built or constructed; they have a third dimension, and they have color or colored parts.  Some works are based on the distinction between the color of the support and the applied color, which is related to the example mentioned above about the wall and the applied tape for an installation.  I don’t work with a specific color system, though I use color very often.  I usually apply color flat on the surface.  The use of material, and the way a work is constructed, shaped and joined together is very interesting, and color is a factor I use very spontaneously.  Of course, there are many choices in using color for objects and paintings, and prefabricated, standardized industrial material is very limited in color and in size.  Working within these limitations and materials is challenging; it is connected to the everyday working world.  The ordinary materials and the way of making a work of art connects it to everyday working processes and techniques.

 

CA: Do you ever combine an object with a wall work?

 

DG: Sometimes I combine them.  In some cases working on a concept leads towards a combination.  Some exhibitions or sites ask for a combination of two and three dimensional work.  The tape is flat and rather two dimensional, and many objects are three dimensional.  An object mounted on the wall calls for a focused, detailed view, and an allover tape work calls for a distant and broad view.  It’s again a two-way system that simultaneously shows distinctions between an object with its own quality in any place, and the tape that only exists on a specific site.  Both are equal parts to be perceived together with the wall or site.  Using many different entities simultaneously can be an aim in the future.  I could imagine combining different or even contary movements in art (and life)—a combination of, for example, Schwitters and Judd, is not really a contradiction to me.  Of course there would be many other interesting possibilities.

 

CA: I am interested in the viewer’s experience of your work.  The wall works make an environment around the viewer, and so there is an element of time and movement in looking.  The objects are more static, more like icons that have a one-to-one physical relationship with the viewer, which is a way of looking that is not so much about movement or time, and more about stillness.  Considering the images in both the wall works and the objects, they can be split very roughly into two groups: imaes that appear to be solid objects, and those that are linear objects.  Viewing each of these is a very different experience.  To put it very simply, as a kind of concrete example, a “Diamond” work on aluminum from 2004 is like a landscape, whereas one of the shaped crosses made of MDF from 2002 is a kind of figure.  Images in the wall works can also prompt these associations, which are part of how the viewer might begin to physically and metaphorically respond to your work.  What kind of visual, physical, and metaphorical responses are you hoping to invoke with your work?

 

DG: My focus is not so much on the responses my work can invoke.  I understand the response as a result of what I do.  I would like to create a free field of associations that can lead to the viewer’s own conclusions.  Something is there without an explanation.  The art work doesn’t need a reason to be—it simply exists, like anything else in the world.  It is a realized possibility besides many other possibilities.  The art work is not a solution for something else; it is something to reflect on, and it is an independent companion.  The viewer experiences the art work immediately in real time and space.  I do not intend to make art that creates secrets or longings.  My concerns are existence, position, orientation, material, construction, proportion, distinction, repetition, contemplation, and stillness.  I like the idea of an artwork that makes sense without a reason.  

The viewer’s response begins with an exhibition.  That’s the moment when the artist’s work is finished and valid.  There is no way back, and no change possible.  The responsibility and the risk for the work is on the artist’s side.  The viewer’s response is the part coming from the outside.  As mentioned before, all elements seem to be based on a two-way system.  It’s a dualism.

The use of the terms ‘landscape’ and ‘figure’ are not very important to me.  I try not to serve this kind of looking at art.  To me it is a pre-determined way of thinking that is unimportant for my work, since my work is spatially oriented and not representational.  The terms “reductive” and “abstract” I understand in a similar way, as a derivation from something else that has been either more or bigger.  I prefer the terms ‘object’ and ‘concrete,’ which I think are the closest to what my work is.

I don’t work towards a specific aim.  I am working permanently on different projects, and they all begin anywhere in the middle of nowhere; they are not yet defined.  I understand my part of the work in developing a concept and realizing the work, and the other part of the work would be the viewer’s view, experience and response.  I understand art as a provision for life, like food and sleep.  Art speaks to the senses; it offers a wide range of contemplation the viewer can reflect on, and it can enhance his or her consciousness of things in life.  

Since visual art is basically a individual enterprise it mainly shows a single point of view towards the world.  My work is one position realized.  It is up to the viewer to get an impression of the work.  I don’t think that art necessarily has to be understood by explanation.  It is one of the free fields which is allowed to be left open.  People can take the visual experience of an art work without possessing it.  Art should not only be shown in a context of art, it should also happen in everyday places.  This is one reason why I like to work in a flexible way .  There is a difference between art lovers going to the galleries and museums, and art going to meet people.  It is a universal language for everyone.  My work is based on simple elements like a line, a field, a geometric form existing in the world already.  I use them by putting them into a new spatial context.  

It is my intension to make artwork in a concrete sense.  To me concrete means a work existing on its own, like any other thing in the world.

 

CA: Something that allows art to remain an open field, as you call it, is that it doesn’t necessarily have a practical function — it’s not useful or utilitarian in the sense that we think of when those words are applied to everyday objects.  As I understand it, the classic defintion of Konkrete Kunst, beginning with Van Doesburg and continuing through Max Bill and Richard Paul Lohse, doesn’t concern itself with abstraction, and certainly possesses no symbolic meaning, but is more or less concerned with an idea expressed visually through geometry.  Is that where you begin?

 

DG: Partly yes, but for me that’s only half the story.  Art history sometimes pretends that a particular art movement is a complete entity.  Using the term “concrete” doesn’t necessarily coincide with the ideologic background of Konkrete Kunst, which was also based on ideas about society and politics.  My concern is about an entity that can also include contradictions—a yes and a no, and even a maybe.  My starting point is a synthesis of different views or positions at the same time, which to me is a spatial view.  It can be obvious or subtle, symmetric or asymmetric or both together, with or without contradiction.  It can be rule and deviation together.  Some of the earlier works I made were collages related to Kurt Schwitters’ work (Merz), any found material roughly glued onto a piece of cardboard— physical, direct, improvised, accidental, colourful, even Dadaistic.  Later, I became interested in Minimal Art, where the artwork is often precisely planned, and perfectly and clearly constructed with a defined use of materials and attention to details.  Both movements are important to me, and sometimes I see my work carrying parts of both, corresponding inbetween those two art historical position.

 

CA: Regarding the function of art, which relates to content and meaning, as I see it art objects do have functions, whether it is for description or depiction, or for contemplation, beauty, or pleasure, or a demonstration or articulation of a critical or philosophical ideal or model, and so on.  Typically, this is a visual experience, though not exclusively.  Any of these functions are part of what make an art work “a work existing on its own.” Is this part of what you mean by a concrete work, or are you more specifically referring to physical and contextual characteristics?

 

DG: The art work as “a work existing on its own” emphasizes mainly its own physical existence.  The functions you mention above are rather functions or directions for the visual experience and the use of the viewer, not necessarily functions of the art works.  Of course, the way a work is built and installed in a context can evoke different visual experiences.  The work is there because there is first a floor or a wall, a spatial situation that provides a position.  The physical work doesn’t exist in a non-space, it needs surroundings to exist.  Maybe thoughts, dreams, or an idea can exist in a non-physical space, but doesn’t it still appear in a spatial situation?

I like a work that exists on its own together with its spatial position.  This doesn’t say anything about the content of the work itself, because the whole situation is the content.  Since everybody lives in a spatial situation, the viewer can experience this freely.  Visual (and physical) perception is existential and important in everybody’s life.  My concern in art is about visual experience and perception in general: a focused view combined with a broad view; a view from above combined with a view from below or from behind; a view from the inside and from the outside; and a view from all different positions.  I try to bring them together again equally.

introduction
Douglas Witmer makes paintings with a purpose.  I mean this in two ways — he makes paintings purposefully, and his paintings have a purpose.  This is not to say in the least that his paintings are predetermined and strictly didactic.  Despite their apparently structured appearance they are expressive rather than merely planned and executed, and porous rather than closed in meaning.

Witmer’s varied and improvised use of color, surface, form, and material is surprisingly expressive.  Anyone who spends time with Mondrian’s signature paintings, for example, knows that they are not rigid repetitions.  Similarly, the viewer will find that Witmer’s paintings are individually achieved, and this is part of where his purposefulness lies: geometry is not something always precisely measured; it can be nuanced and emotional, and it often breaks rules or has unlikely sources.  My mention of Mondrian of course risks a misunderstanding via an assumed derivation or inheritance, so perhaps a more appropriate and useful reference might be Klee’s sensitive, playful, and inventive qualities.

As for the purpose of Witmer’s paintings, this is always the tricky part — society generally wants to know what a piece of art is about, what it means, and what it is good for.  But what does it really mean to understand art?  Does it mean to know something with certainty, to explain it definitively, and then to move on?  There usually isn’t a single answer to art’s meaning.  Most good art is slippery — the meanings we try to catch and hold instead make us return to an art object again and again for confirmation and renewal.

Willem de Kooning’s oft-quoted statement is apt here: “Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It’s very tiny — very tiny, content.”  What we get from art may come in fragments, on the periphery and over time, and is often unexpected, indirect, and personal.  Not only are Witmer’s paintings open to viewer associations, but they intentionally invite these associations.  This, I think, is part of the purpose of Witmer’s art: these beautifully crafted, carefully considered paintings bear graphically clear but ambiguous images that make pictorial and physical spaces for the viewer to see, feel, and think.  These spaces, handmade and shared, where nuance and touch are important, and where close-up observation of details matter, are where glimpses occur and meanings arise.  These paintings involve the artist and the viewer in an intimate collaboration of looking.  In a poem called Telling You All Rilke writes: “Let’s invite something new/by unifying our silences;/if, then and there, we advance,/we’ll know it soon enough.”  Meaning is found in the experience of looking at Witmer’s paintings, not just in explanations, and in that looking a kind of knowing is possible.

— Chris Ashley, December 2005

 

The following conversation between Douglas Witmer and Chris Ashley was conducted via email between late August and early November 2005, and supplemented by extended conversations and studio visits in Philadelphia during October 6-11.  For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.

 

Chris Ashley: I first became familiar with your paintings and drawings through digital images, and now after having recently seen quite a bit of your work while in Philadelphia I can say that the digital images are plainly not an adequate substitute for seeing the real thing.  For example, there is subtlety around the edges of your shapes, nuanced brushwork, and small shifts in size between similar shapes, each with unique edges from the hand-placed taping.  Because often a valuable starting point for looking at and comparing art objects is simply to take note of what you see, I thought it might useful for you to describe some of the essential material and physical characteristics of your recent paintings and works on paper, and some thoughts about how and why you chose these.

 

Douglas Witmer: I sort of break it down into a short list of dualities: horizontal versus vertical, light versus dark (more recently I might call this “color” versus “white”), brushstroke versus lack-of-brushstroke, shape versus field, and gloss versus matte.  When I first started exhibiting my work it was quite gestural and “expressionist.”  There came a point when gesturalism lost its meaning for me.  I rejected the improvisatory way I painted at that time and began a process of isolating and examining the choices I make in painting.  Eventually I reduced my painting to a single repeated mark.

This might sound funny, but I enjoy watching cooking shows, and I especially like overhead views of chefs working with all the ingredients pre-measured in separate containers.  As I took my painting practice apart, I began to think of my painting choices this way.  It had a clarifying effect, because I could feel like I knew—or was conscious of—what I was doing.

By rejecting gesturalism, I effectively eliminated my hand from my painting for a number of years.  More recently I came to realize how much I enjoy the feeling of brushing and how I missed seeing it in my work.  And so, to use my cooking show analogy, reintroducing a visible brushstroke was a matter of looking at the ingredients/components of my work and making choices in order to find a new balance.

 

CA: Following this analogy, every painting requires a unique recipe or you’re just making the same thing over and over, which would be a violation of your past declaration that, “painting is not a statement,” but is instead an ongoing, evolving relationship.  Elsewhere you wrote, “Perhaps contrary to their first impression, my compositions are not pre-planned or measured ahead of time.”  Few of your current paintings seem to share a constant size, and color varies quite a bit from work to work.  Can you say a bit more about how you actually go about making a painting?

 

DW: I work under the assumption that within simplest dualities there are infinite and complicated possibilities. I try to treat every piece as an individual, and I like the challenge of working out the decisions directly on the pieces.  With processes like mine that involve handiwork and an emphasis on touch and tactility, even if it is quite subtle, I don’t think I could repeat the same painting twice if I tried.  I don’t think of myself as especially prolific.  There’s a lot of time spent just looking and considering and mentally thinking through possibilities.  You could say that I have made some definitive choices about the things I do in painting and the things I don’t do, but I’m not systematic about those choices.  Nothing I do is meant to be preparatory.  I make sketches, but they’re just notations and they rarely go directly into anything. Occasionally I make a painting on paper and I will repeat its basic components on a canvas.  Size, scale, shape and color are determined according to what feels right. Recently I made a large and small version of the same painting, but they were just very similar to each other and very different from each other.

Finally, there’s something I can’t explain about myself when I work.  No matter how much planning, scheming, ruminating or whatever I put into a work, when it comes to the painting action, I never do what I thought I was going to do.  Or perhaps I should say, I’m never prepared for what happens in painting.

 

CA: An encounter with paintings by the mid-15th Century Sienese painter called the Osservanza Master was very significant for you, and led you to identifying a kind of geometry that has become an important aspect of your work.  How did that happen?

 

DW: In 2000 I was in the midst of a frightening dry spell with my work, and I was terribly ambivalent about the meaning of any kind of painting gesture.  One day I was in a used bookstore thumbing through a catalog from an exhibition some years back at the Metropolitan Museum called Painting in Renaissance Siena.  I was particularly excited by the work of the Osservanza Master, and then came across the reproduction of a painting that’s here in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one that I was always fond of in a very basic, naive, like/dislike kind of way.  I really didn’t know anything about the painting, but something about seeing that painting on that day in my life enabled me to move on.

I still had no idea of what to do next.  In those Sienese paintings I was attracted to the beautifully warm and radiant colors and the tight geometric compositions.  But the most meaningful part is how, despite their attempt to depict space on the flat panel, each and every one fails, at least to my 21st Century eyes.  It was like there was this visual longing trapped inside the limits of the painter’s body.  To me they completely expressed the crisis I felt I was in, a sort of breakdown of seeing versus belief.  There was so much devotion or desire, but in the end no way to fully represent that visually.

I tinkered a lot during the next months.  I traced the reproductions in the catalogue to see if I could isolate the compositions from the religious scenes they were depicting.  What came out of that process was the use of a trapezoid shape, usually anchored to an edge of the image.  It easily connoted a receding plane, but could be handled so as to make it not function the way it seemed like it was supposed to, and so it became a “space symbol.”  In terms of an image with a personal emotional significance I thought of it as pushing my painting down into itself in order that I could re-enter the process, like walking out onto a platform into a new unknown.  It seemed right at the time to make the paintings large enough to feel that you could physically enter them.  So I had these paintings that were kind of spatial.  And around that time I started investigating the issue the opposite way, by making tiny wooden reliefs—the Fruitville series— that projected out from the wall, but were subtly manipulated to make them appear flatter.

All that work made between 2000 and 2003 was very involved with the idea of the perception of space, how that impacts one’s sense of reality, and more symbolically, one’s belief in something.  Today I think I’m working with much less of an idea.  That is, I’m not trying so hard to make a painting achieve a desired result.  I rely much more on intuition, with components that I allow to move or that I guide into place.  I work from the visual relationships and personal associations that occur during the process.  I feel like they come out of having a lot more faith in painting.  I don’t have a need to make them present questions of themselves.  And they are quite a bit flatter.

 

CA: What do what you mean by “pushing my painting down into itself in order to re-enter the process.”

 

DW: I was making a huge overhaul of my painting.  The body of work that was current at that time (which is very different than what I do today) had a distinct identity.  I suppose you could say I had formed an identity around it as well. My own work became a kind of barrier for me. I liked the idea of pushing the painting down, but into itself.  It enabled me to learn that I can exert a lot of personal will into painting, but that painting can also respond to and hold that.  And that is when I began to use the word “relationship” a lot in reference to my practice.

 

CA: I’m interested in what you called “space symbol,” and how this occurs or is used in your work.  I think you mean something different than a repeated or signature image, not just a device.  Do mean “symbol” as something that comes out of culture, or is even archetypal?  Some of the shapes you use are found in lots of places; for example, you’ve acknowledged an interest in Indian painting, too.

 

DW: In earlier work I think the trapezoid actually was a device for me.  In our time, the idea of one-point perspective is so completely ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted.  It’s like we assume the view of the camera’s eye— the lens— when we think about seeing.  We forget that this is not the way we see naturally with our two eyes, and that something is functioning physically in our brain to blend both views into what we perceive.  It’s easy to see a trapezoid and automatically think “receding plane,” whether or not it actually operates illusionistically. My intention was to use it to fool the mind more than the eye. That’s what I mean by it being a “space symbol.”

 

CA: You talked about devotion in Sienese painting as both an act and a “visual longing trapped inside the limits of the painter’s body,” which I think of as a feeling of striving towards something. We have also talked about devotion and reverence.  How does thisfigure in your work?

 

DW: I aspire for my work to convey a sense that it is grounded in a personal spirituality.  This spirituality is not clearly delineated for me in a way that I can put into words.  But reverence and devotion are components of how it manifests itself.  Devotion can simply be seen as practice, and reverence as an attitude within that practice.  For me reverence connotes something very quiet, a kindof hushed awe in the presence of something larger than oneself.  This larger presence could be nature, history, or an ideal.  I have been trying to make my work seem quieter and quieter, even if it is strident in terms of its design.  I would like to think of it as silent.  Silence is a precarious balance that can be broken; it’s a situation with so much potential.

In terms of devotion, I just resonate with the idea of a constant, even, but not closed and not unchanging practice, a momentum that is built up by making, considering, even loving one’s work.  Tending to, caring about, cherishing the work, working joyfully— do these seem like passé values?  Or is this the big secret that artists keep from one another because it’s not smart enough to pass through the critical threshold, that we do it because of love and devotion?  Does it go without saying?  Should it go without saying?

 

CA: This seems like the right place to ask about your Mennonite background, aspects of which you’ve referenced in statements and conversation as being important in your art.  I’m particularly interested in the notion of the word “plain-ness” and the attitudes and practices that go with that.

 

DW: I grew up pretty steeped in the Mennonite culture of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Plain-ness is a practice that arose in 19th Century America as a material acting out of earlier Mennonite ideals.  It was a primary way of distinguishing oneself from contemporary society.  Being plain meant forsaking expensive clothing, accoutrements, and conveniences in favor of living a simple life and demonstrating humility rather than pridefulness.  There are still traditional Mennonite and Amish groups who would use the word plain to describe themselves.  My family didn’t dress plain or drive a buggy or car with all the chrome painted black, but there were vestiges of that in the church where I grew up.

Plain-ness was also prevalent as a sort of “anti-design” principle in Mennonite architecture.  For instance, looking at the church I attended growing up, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish the front from the back except for the double doors on one end.  It’s just a red brick rectangle with a simple pitched roof sitting on top; no ornamentation, no steeple.  No images inside either, and in fact, Mennonites prefer the term “meetinghouse” to “church”.  The architecture of houses and barns is similar, and these kinds of structures are all over Lancaster County.  It’s almost a “minimalist” look, except using that word evokes a kind of high-minded aesthetic which of course the Mennonites had no clue about.  From a plain perspective, it’s just about having a decently built, simple and functional structure.  It’s not a design principle.  I think plain-ness comes from the literal way Mennonites approach the Bible.  Mennonites take the example of Jesus’ life literally, and growing up in this church culture I didn’t learn how to think in terms of metaphor.

So when I started becoming an artist I found myself drawn immediately to the basic components of painting.  I had little or no interest in depicting subject matter, but a lot of interest in terms of how a painting could be made.  And I think I took it for granted that a “well-made” painting was in fact a message in and of itself.  These days I find myself trying to do things in ways that are very clear.  I like when actions sort of “name themselves” in a painting, such as brushwork that just declares itself as brushwork, or a color that is simply itself, not an in-between kind of color.  Or I like when certain components of a painting show you what other components are, such as a matte surface calling attention to a gloss surface.

The more I consider it, I think the tendency towards plain-ness comes out of a desire for a mindset of purity and humility that is integrated in a way that is always guiding one’s thoughts and actions.  Whether or not this is still the way plain-ness is practiced materially by current Mennonites, I believe it is an ideal that guides my painting practice.

 

CA: Where do your current images come from?  Do any of your paintings contain shapes borrowed or derived from the farms, landscape, or crafts around Lancaster County?  There are kinds of framings and structures in your current work that can be read as fields, boundaries, foundations, skeletons and scaffolding.

 

DW: This is a really difficult question for me to answer.  Earlier this year Linn Meyers asked me a similar question— “What are your paintings pictures of?”  In retrospect, I answered somewhat flippantly. I said I don’t paint pictures of any thing; I make paintings.  This was kind of a half-answer, of course, because the images I end up making absolutely come from very personal places for me.  What are the names for these places?  I’m as ambivalent about answering a question like this for you as I am for myself.  On the one hand shouldn’t I scrutinize this in the same way I scrutinize the mechanics of my painting?  Or is it better that I leave it unsaid, wordless, in a way protected even from myself, to be simply felt in my (or your) act of seeing it, whatever “it” is?  I guess I would feel badly if I knew that things I said about my work would become a stand-in for someone’s actual experience of seeing my work.

I‘ll reiterate that when it comes to my imagery I don’t think in the types of words you have just said, though I welcome those associations.  I tend to focus on the obvious materiality of what I have made.  So what I would call a glossy white rectangle you might read as a boundary.  Nevertheless, I care that I make the material specifics of the glossy white rectangle have the potential to convey feeling that is quite immaterial.

I will also tell you about something particular I’ve noticed recently while I work.  To a degree, I have always been an observational painter in that things I see or fragments from things I see undergo a process of distillation in the studio.  I photograph a lot of things for future reference.  But there has been a shift in my thoughts from this kind of observation towards visual memories from my early childhood.

This is relevant as we talk about where and how I was raised.  Lancaster County and the Mennonite community there have both changed drastically since I was a child.  It was a much more distinct and, I think, special kind of place and culture than it is today. Just as an example, off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen families my family knows whose once-pristine farms have been paved over and developed into McMansion subdivisions.  My own family’s greenhouse business, begun in 1898 by my great-great grandfather, was forced to close this year; the land has been sold to developers.  Every time I drive back from Philadelphia it breaks my heart to see and experience it dissolving into the mainstream American culture of affluence and consumption. Talk about innocence lost.

You could say that I idealize or fantasize my memories of that time and place, which is probably true.  But it’s a useful fantasy for me.  It generates a feeling of an ideal that I can paint towards.

 

CA: Where do you see your work fitting into the continuum of abstract art?

 

DW: Once I heard someone refer to some artists including Agnes Martin as “heaven painters.”  I can’t recall the context, but I remember thinking I wouldn’t object to someone using that term for me.  To an extent, I see artists falling into two very generalized groups: those who go for layering and complexity, and those who go for distillation and simplification.  Of course, I am among the latter.  People still argue abstraction’s validity.  I assume they focus on the arc of 20th Century abstraction practiced in Western civilization as codified by Western art history.  The fact of the matter is that abstraction, and geometric form in particular, has long been—has perhaps always been—connected to human spiritual aspiration.

 

CA: As we’ve talked several topics have been raised that seem to share a religious thread.  You’ve talked about Sienese religious painting, Mennonite culture, and ideas about devotion and reverence, and you said, “I aspire for my work to convey a sense that it is grounded in a personal spirituality.”  All of this has been instrumental in the formation of your current work, but you haven’t made any claims that your work is itself spiritual, or aids a viewer’s spirituality.  Instead, you say that your work is very much rooted in the material, with color and form being nothing more than what they are. The experience of looking is important for you.  You want this experience, as I understand it, to be for the viewer about observation, time, and presence.  I see that as realism.  I see your work as perhaps secular, but certainly not agnostic; instead, I see your work as trying to reach people, and I think of that as social, as serving a purpose.  I wonder if you see your art in that way.

 

DW: You’re right.  I do not and cannot make a claim that the work itself is spiritual.  At one time I would have also suggested that my paintings were not necessarily art—that all I could do was do the best I could to make the visual situation and then release it in hope that another person could have an art experience in relationship to it like I did.  This attitude was formed during that period of profound questioning, and I was reacting exactly to what you bring up in terms of the paintings being “nothing” but fabric stretched over wood with pigmented liquefied plastic applied to it.  The Mennonite culture has produced a lot of highly skilled functional craftspeople, but few studio artists.  Warren Rohrer was an enormous exception— no surprise that his life and work have been great examples for me.  I think the assumption is that a painting doesn’t do anything, and that attitude dogs me all the time, from within myself.  Add to that the more contemporary notion of “art for art’s sake” and painting can quickly stand for isolated self-centeredness, which is a complete affront.  But then there are all these examples— the Sienese panels are just one instance from human history—of painting having a real use to a community or society.  One of the things I love about some of those Sienese panels is they actually exhibit use: people would scratch at the eyes of the evil spirits portrayed.

So I have these related questions:  What use is there for my painting? What can my paintings do?  I realized at some point that the simple act of seeing, in a situation where you can actually feel or perceive yourself seeing, is where all the power in an art experience is for me.  It’s a sort of para-intellectual experience. It doesn’t turn its back on anything that you know, but in the moments of this kind of seeing, processes of explanation or definition are suspended.  In my mind it has everything to do with the material specifics of the art object.  I assume that if I feel the need for this kind of experience then others do as well.  Maybe that thought forms a kind of statement of purpose, perhaps a statement of faith that I didn’t always have for painting.

introduction
Steve Karlik’s paintings are formally refined yet generous in spirit, grounded in materials yet spatial and open. His work is that of a serious painter, at first seeming almost severe, yet with time revealing itself as sensual, emotional, and beautiful. A thoughtful viewer will find that his reductive forms can resonate with one’s memory, references, and experiences; the associations one makes with his work are varied and surprising. The paintings involve our eyes, minds, and bodies. His work is scaled to our physical presence, but brings about in us a dual response — it is both intimate and monumental. If the personal is political, then the politics of Steve’s work are a belief in the importance of the individual and a responsibility to the collective; in the viewer’s heightened experience is found the significance of our connection to each other — the possibility of a simultaneously singular and shared meaning.

— Chris Ashley, September 2005 

 

The following conversation between Steve Karlik and Chris Ashley was conducted via email from April to July 2005, and included a studio visit in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, on May 20, 2005. For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.

 

Chris Ashley: Steve, why don’t we start with some basics: where are you from, and how did you become a painter?

 

Steve Karlik: I was born in 1960 and grew up surrounded by nature in rural Oregon, outside Portland to be exact.  One day in my mid 20’s, I started painting because it gave me the latitude to reflect on the texture of the land as I experienced it.  I’d been looking at James Lavadour’s paintings of eastern Oregon, and my first paintings were these gray-to-sepia blurs, washy landscape references with a few recognizable features.  My only concern was pushing landscape painting further into abstraction until I was introduced head-on to Mark Rothko’s work.  The washy fields I was painting then began to lose their landscape reference to something more non-objective.  I attended Portland State University in 1990 and studied painting under Mel Katz, a Post-Minimalist sculptor from New York who introduced me to thinking about art in a pragmatic manner.  When I got to Portland State, I was surprised because my studio was in the same building where Rothko learned math as a child.  In 1995, I was accepted into the graduate program at Pratt Institute and moved to New York.

At Pratt I studied under Ted Kurahara and Linda Francis, and developed friendships with the Brazilian painter Daniel Feingold, and future Minus Space artists Mathew Deleget and Rossana Martínez.  In 1996, I saw two important exhibitions that made a lot of sense: the Ellsworth Kelly retrospective at the Guggenheim; and the wall-mounted oil stick planes by Richard Serra at Mathew Marks.  Kelly and Serra began to express for me critical art that pushed the relationships of form and space, and used those relationships to engage the viewer directly.  Immediately after Pratt I found a studio in DUMBO (the Brooklyn neighborhood Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and I now live and paint in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 

CA: You entered graduate school in your thirties, an age later than seems typical these days.  What were you doing before then?  What difference do you think your age may have made in your approach to graduate school, the work you did there, and the path you took afterwards?

 

SK: Before graduate school I was a book binder.  I did that for about ten years.  It was kind of a cool profession with lots of hands-on work.  My age was a factor then in the kind of art I produced.  I’d been in a trade for ten years where the production process was meticulous and extremely demanding.  A strong sense of craftsmanship was essential, and you had to turn out a well-crafted product in large volume at high speed.  I was twenty-seven at the time, and just entering art school as an undergraduate — I remember taking a lot of what I practiced at work into the studio.  I had a studio for a while where I worked in the loft space above the production floor.  I would work at night using the equipment below to produce art.  I made a series of reductive forms that for the first time really followed an exact process determined by the materials.  I would eventually use mylar and multiple layers of an industrial tape that was thick and soft, semi-transparent and amber-colored.  As the layers built up, I would take the work-in-progress to the hydraulic cutter, apply clamped pressure (about 600 lbs per square inch) and clean it up with the hydraulic knife.  I wish I still had some examples; the surfaces were packed and had the appearance of layered bands of raw beeswax.  It was really then that I started developing a personal aesthetic.

 

CA: Bookbinding as a craft is, of course, very hands-on and visual.  I think it’s fascinating that you were doing this other kind of visual work before painting, and that bookbinding lent its materials to the beginning of your making visual art.  It sounds like you came to making art mostly on your own.  How did making a painting with tape turn into painting with paint?

 

SK: The overall experience in the shop seductively smelled of drying ink, lacquer, and paper; it felt like a place where art was being made.  I worked on a printing press setting up dies and locking in forms for the purpose of scoring book and magazine covers so they wouldn’t crack when folded.  These were basically locked-in steel structures that held scoring blades sandwiched between wood and lead strips of different widths and point degrees.  The sheet would run over this die while moving around a large drum.

We had to sometimes shim the die to make it score deeper, and pack the drum with paper backing to protect it.  Some of the runs were long and the drum would take a beating.  When the run was over, the press was cleaned with lacquer thinner.  There would be a deposit of dust, ink, oil, lead and tape on the backing sheets, a transferred film or stain that was a silky gray green.  It wasn’t long before I started seeing abstractly into the by-products of production.

I started using the backing sheets like an underpainting, applying a tape we used in production over these stains to give them depth and a thick, almost opaque, amber color.  Soon thereafter, the tape became the primary focus.  I could lay down tape, layer upon layer, apply pressure and repeat the process, building up a thick, waxy, amber field.  I was creating art that looked like painting without actually painting.  More importantly, I was intrigued by how much variation could be found within one unified surface.  When I was formally enrolled in art school, this was the imagery I attempted to recreate with paint — it was dark, indifferent and physical, and it looked severe and spontaneous.  Finally, the canvas seemed so much more vital to presenting it as art.

 

CA: It’s interesting how the imagery and surfaces in your paintings seem to have these definite sources.  With this earlier work you’ve just described, there is a process of laying things down and working at a surface, and while your current work is quite different, there is also a great attention to surface and process.  It’s always interesting to hear about what an artist has in mind, even distantly, when thinking about his or her work.  You mentioned the landscape, and I’m wondering if there are references to other media or fields of study that are important to your work.  For some this might be literature, film, architecture, music, scientific facts or data, and these might be influences that are visual, philosophic, sociological, and so on.

 

SK: I like to think that my paintings are somewhat informed by Modernist architecture. The 2004 panels on view on Minus Space with the elliptical forms actually came about after looking at Louis Kahn.  I see these elliptical forms as drawings — plan views for idealized structures. 

Modernist architects have done some amazing things, and when it’s really good, the thinking comes through visually. There’s logic with architects like Alvaro Siza or Kahn that is tied directly to their relationship with materials — simplicity derived from using steel or wood, for instance, on steel’s and wood’s terms. The really good architects, historically, have had a close relationship with the materials and have had the ability to assert their own identity into the process, so that while the uniqueness of the materials helped shape the project, the project visually shows the architect’s ideals.  Siza’s use of brick brought us unique forms that were realized by using brick slightly out of context.  In looking at some of these structures, it all makes complete sense rather quickly.

 

CA: Can you describe some of the ideas you’re trying to realize in the work, and how you think you’re successful at making that happen? Perhaps you can talk about a specific work that you feel integrates the conceptual and visual aspects of your work.

 

SK: Finding ways of letting the materials carry an idea is something I’m always trying to track down and will probably always be moving towards; you could refer to it as transcendence of the everyday through visual experience.  I like to think that reductive work has a poetic undercurrent that supports reductive painting’s more literal and theoretical understanding.

The piece Settlement Series, Corsair (24 x 48 inches) has connotations that are pretty obvious — Corsair refers to the aircraft.  This work is an idealization, and considers the pre-high modern images of some aircraft in current high-Modernist light.  I think it’s important to understand that this painting isn’t a duplication of actual wing markings, but the essence of them through color and structure.  The markings on the original aircraft were bands of white-black-white-black-white amidst the blue of the wing.

The materials used in the painting are hand-polished wood and specific hues of extremely flat gray-blue acrylic and tempera paint, which is brushed, rolled, and sanded with care and precision.  I was careful to duplicate the original blue of the Corsair’s body on the painting with mixtures of Cerulean Blue, Medium Gray Light, and Lamp Black; one band tended towards black and the other band is the actual blue of the Corsair.  The piece is elongated, horizontal, and object-like to suggest a general sense of the ideal wing, yet it is the emblematic quality of the painted bands that is important for the painting to carry a reference to the actual Corsair.  With the painted surface hard and matte, like paint on metal, there is a transition from non-concrete idea to meaning.

In the work Corsair, a visible reference to a specific, almost mythical aircraft is established in the context of contemporary art as motif, and the painting becomes a field where a current interest in blue finds a childhood fascination with a specific visual memory and plants it solely in an art context.  The reference to a Corsair becomes less important than how the work reinterprets Corsair as the emphasis for making painting that engages in a dialogue with painting.

 

CA: Painters, particularly abstract painters, often work to make paintings that are both an image and an object, and work at integrating those two aspects.  Each aspect requires its own considerations, and making the painting a whole entity requires additional considerations.  Are you working towards a painting that the viewer can see holistically?  And in doing this are you trying to let the viewer follow your decision making process, as well as be aware of whatever intentions or impulses you may be operating with?  Is there an ideal that you hope to lead the viewer towards?

 

SK: I have a history of making work that is mute and intends to transcend expressive activity — what artist Daniel Feingold refers to as a “sound free ambiance devoid of personal expression.”  Holistic is a good term.  Recognizing the painting pre-consciously, or feeling it in the gut, is one of the goals.  Like most painting, the information is all there to be retrieved or uncovered, yet what is brought to the activity of viewing that positions the viewer centrally within the experience of the work is most important.  I think if I were to move the viewer towards an understanding of the really precarious state that the idea of balance suggests, I would be adding value to art and painting in general.

 

CA: This notion of the viewer’s experience of your paintings as leading to an “understanding of the precarious state that the idea of balance suggests” really appeals to me.  It’s something that one would think would be present in all art, but mostly in the background.  It sounds like you want that to be one of the primary experiences of your work.  Can you say a little more about that idea?

 

SK: I have always tried to establish an overall sense of balance, or rather equilibrium, so that it becomes the signature of oppositions that resonate in a kind of dance.  Equilibrium reflects a universality or wholeness that is a dynamic state.  You might say that I explore in painting what may exist in essence through geometric forms which are purely abstract and build (visually) into highly structured compositions.  What is important is that space is not static, but a visually dynamic push-and-pull.

 

CA: It appears from studio photos that you work on paintings laid flat on the table, and my studio visit seemed to confirm that, too.  Do you always work flat, or do you also work on paintings hanging on the wall?

 

SK: Rarely do I work on the wall. The surface I am after is blatantly flat with little imperfection.  The paint I use is a water-thin mixture of acrylic and tempera with acrylic binders similar to extremely thin house paint, which dries with the same characteristics.  The paint is put on in many coats and has a tendency to run, sometimes showing light-traces where the paint might dry more unevenly in areas that accumulate more paint.  Having the work face up allows me to look at it as raking light falls down and across it.  This is important with the darker colors, where what is required is a dense sheet or film. When light falls across the surface evenly, I know it’s close to being finished.

 

CA: What is the “fox fur” reference that you are using in many of the recent titles?  My guess is that it has something to do with color.  It seems that all the paintings with “fox fur” in the title have a gray.  There is, of course, the silvery gray of fox, and these grays look rather lustrous.  How are you using that term?

 

SK: The term “fox fur” ultimately describes a range of grays that I started using in early 2004. When I did the series Fox Fur and Teal, I was rediscovering that all forms of gray are really complex hints of muted color, and I was looking for a title for the series that described the overall variations of gray within the range being used.

In the first series, however, entitled Fox Fur, I was pulling paint over the surface with a large knife, leaving accumulated skins of translucent paint.  These skins or films always covered a dark blue or black ground and the surface became cloud-like in appearance.  The term “fox fur” became descriptive of a process.  It certainly referred to a subtle range of color, but also alluded to the nebulous quality of the final surface, i.e., the Fox Fur Nebula.  The interest in the silvery grays stuck and I started using this focus as the basis for developing new work that considered color in a more specific manner. The “fox fur” reference finally became a reference to, or rather a description of, a quality of color, a non-descript silvery gray that ranges from yellow to magenta and includes any color absorbed by it.

 

CA: It can be pretty bold to say, as you do in your MINUS SPACE statement, “The work is not about anything, but the thought of remnants is important…,” because you’re asking the viewer to give up on expecting to be handed a readily received, digestible package of meaning.  Instead the viewer enters into a pre-verbal, visual, time-based experience, which requires an investment in the process of looking, during which the painted object “unfolds.”  In this dynamic I think the artist gives something to the viewer, but also requires that the viewer give to the work too.  The viewer’s giving is their engagement in the process of active, sensitive looking.  Without that the image/object’s unfolding doesn’t happen.  Do you see this — the engagement, the unfolding through looking, the time it takes to do all of this — as part of the subject matter and meaning of your work?

 

SK: I don’t like letting the viewer off the hook easily.  I like to think I demand of the viewer as much as they demand of the so-called artwork.  I don’t think the viewer is transparent to painting, especially with reductive abstraction.  There is no subject-object relationship, unless of course you immediately hand them all the answers right up front, so asking the viewer to go to the pre-verbal and give up on a readily digestible package of meaning seems appropriate for where I want my painting to go.

I say my work is not about anything because it sits in that literalist realm where it unfolds continuously with time.  Some painting is visually ever-renewing; each time you come back to it there is some variable that wasn’t noticed or that becomes apparent over time.  Painting that is more literal is wholly manifest at any moment and never changes; it keeps unfolding continuously with time rather than over it.  The work confronts the viewer and meaning depends partially on what the viewer brings to it and what the work offers.  As a structure outside of consciousness that consciousness refers to, abstraction becomes a field that provides an extension into an idealized sphere of meaning.  I think this has to happen pre-verbally before meaning is given.

 

CA: It seems to me that this structure would first engage the viewer in your experience, as a model, a thing outside themselves, and then as an experience of their own.  Do you agree with that?

 

SK: I do. There are qualities in some art forms that are more, to some degree, objectifiable.  Art can be representational and meaning can be developed more immediately.  With non-objective or more literal art, the model is more perceptual and doesn’t carry as well-developed or agreed-upon sets of meaning that a painting such as the The Last Supper or even a stop sign carries.  With non-objective art we almost have to weigh the whole object and perceptually gauge its presence.  We have to come to terms with it individually as a thing.

 

CA: The imagery and ideas you use have definite sources.  Earlier you referred to the importance of Kelly and Serra in your comprehension of “critical art that pushed the relationships of form and space and used those relationships to engage the viewer directly.”  I think this statement could apply to your work, too.  I wonder if you could unpack this a bit, in particular, what this might mean for your art.

 

SK: Every once in a while, a painter or a sculptor needs to come along and really try to dismantle the art form.  Kelly uses the formal, visual elements that define painting’s flatness to make objects.  Serra takes our understanding of an object and turns it back on us, redefining it by challenging human perception.  In both artists I saw work that was highly conceptual because the idea became visible in the object during the viewing of it.  I see art with heavy formal elements becoming a more open-ended system when the space of the viewer is enlisted.

To answer the question, in painting I look for visual elements that are speculative, that challenge the art form and remain unique in voice.  The space of painting is a fairly tricky space to navigate; it’s flat, but also contains connotations and narrations that are other than flat.  Painting’s space is illusionistic.  These concerns have to be orchestrated in a way that is visually unique, makes sense conceptually, and moves the art form ahead intellectually.

 

CA: We have talked elsewhere about the idea of a central metaphor to an artist’s work.  I brought up examples discussed in an interview in a catalogue for painter George Lawson; Lawson mentions painter Patsy Krebs’ idea of a central metaphor regarding one’s work and discusses his own central metaphor.  For example, Krebs had referred to a reproduction of a Siennese Annunciation in her studio and identified the concept of transmission and inspiration as central metaphors for her work.  In Lawson’s case, as I understand it, a reproduction of one of the sarcophagus frescoes from the Diver’s Tomb in Paestum is an image that he identifies with and connects his work to in terms of the importance of diving deeply, of taking a leap and plunging into the middle of an action, place, or emotion.  Can you identify a central metaphor that is operating in your work?  You’ve already mentioned the importance of Modernist architecture and also the idea of flight related to the Corsair airplane.

 

SK: Flight is beauty in tension — all that force, speed and grace.  The reference to the Corsair worked well for that particular painting; it allowed me to locate idea in a realm separate from expression so I could remove myself somewhat and stand outside or adjacent to the work and visually focus on the painting.

I tend to be pretty methodical in my approach to looking at work-in-progress, and when I’m in the studio, I mostly contemplate the work’s visual logic.  All the visual elements (surface, form, and color) have to balance, yet have a slightly-off quality, a weight.  I’ll refer to it as a strange sense of familiarity.  The Japanese refer to it in their traditional pottery as a balance of perfect imperfection, which comes from nature.  The idea signifies for me a balance or beauty that has tension. 

When I paint I tape off and paint rather quickly.  The works are a lot less planned than they look.  The slightly-off quality I refer to is a subtlety, and recognizing it on the panel before it’s taped-off is like seeing something as a flash that goes off when, for a brief moment, the mind is left with an imprint of structure.  I really have to trust my decisions, because often times the kind of tension I’m after is poised on failure — failure of not being taken far enough, or taken too far. 

 

CA: I think I see a number of ideas in operation in your work: the separation of idea and expression; the precarious nature of balance; and the moment of recognition, or understanding, as a flash.  You work to achieve this by creating or finding tensions in a work that catches the viewer by surprise, sparking a moment of recognition or memory.

 

SK: I’m often surprised myself.  Looking for minor visual elements, such as emerging color relationships or the relationships of form that need to be explored and made concrete, sits at the heart of what I do.  What really inspires me is nature and its systems, the motion of which always tends towards maximum efficiency.  It is nature’s systems that first got me interested in thinking about balance and how tenuous and resilient natural systems are, always poised between decay and regeneration.  There is a lot of movement there that when experienced on a human scale looks static, but it’s constantly aligning and realigning itself so that it stays poised and efficient. 

 

CA: There are a couple more ideas, I think.  One is in the idea you mentioned related to pottery— is your painting a kind of following your materials and their properties and behaviors, of accepting what they can do, just as a ceramicist might have to do with clay and glazes?  And secondly, you said you are looking for subtle tensions and beauty related to “perfect imperfection”— are you trying to create those tensions, or are you trying to find those tensions?  Where does that tension reside? Is it mostly in the surface of the painting, in the drawing and form, or are there other aspects to the entire painted image and object that are contributing to these tensions?

 

SK: I definitely prefer to let the materials be themselves and follow them.  The materials set the rules.  Imperfections in the materials often set the tone for what happens visually with the entire painting.  I first started using wood as a support for functional reasons — I tend to press hard, and it doesn’t warp as canvas can.  Wood became an aesthetic choice because it’s a finished surface that reacts dramatically with nearly any surface next to it.  The tonality of wood changes with different colors and can float or recede much as a color does depending on what color or texture is adjacent to it.  I also prefer panels with a good deal of surface tension, where the grain shows stress or character.

An entire image or object in balance with its imperfections is worked to that level of completion and is usually a quality that is subtle and realized only when it’s finished.  There is a level of spontaneity related to the painting process in finding it.  Usually there is something (a form, a surface, or a color) that might weigh just a bit more than another area relative to it, or might impact the painting as a whole without being so obvious that it dominates the entire painting.  This is how I ultimately see tension having the greatest strength.  I like to work these areas of tension into relationships so they are controlled as an entire painting that functions as a system.

 

CA: Any recent developments in your work?  What’s ahead?

 

SK: Sometimes we overlook things that after the fact seem painfully obvious.  During our studio visit, you pointed out that my wood surfaces functioned like drawing by comparing them with the earlier pulled wax surfaces.  I owe you for that one — it’s become a kind of echo with implications on how I might consider the surface as more active.  “Flip” is a new piece on MINUS SPACE that reflects this.  I am also starting a series of vertical wall mounted sculpture that involve reflective color and reflective light; they follow nicely off the paintings, but seem strangely lighter.

 

CA: I’m curious to know what place you think art, and in particular your art, has in the world?  I’m asking that kind of eternal question about the meaning of art and what it’s good for.

 

SK: Someone once made a joke in one of my studio critiques at Pratt that started up a good conversation.  They were considering the way of the dinosaur and trying to determine what kind I was.  My instructor (bless her) told them, “the kind that wants to bring people to their knees” — that would be the Abstract Expressionist inside me.  All joking aside, the kind of Modernism that was emerging after Abstract Expressionism, only gets to flourish sporadically.  High Modernism keeps appearing and reappearing and is continually taking on new meaning and escalating Modernism as an art form that is critical of itself.  That is the key to keeping Modernist art from intellectually going the way of the dinosaur.  Because Modernism reserves some of the critical dialogue for the artists, I hope that my work helps push that dialogue along.

To answer the last part of the question honestly, I get kind of itchy if I go too long without moving paint around — again, the inner Abstract Expressionist talking.  Painting allows me to navigate the world in a way that brings visual structure to its nuances, reshape it, tag it, preserve it, and color it.  While I feel I’m continually arriving at something, I’m also searching for something and painting allows me to work that out visually.  I also get a great deal of pleasure from living with painting.

 

introduction
Sharon Brant’s paintings and drawings embody a consistency of vision and persistence. Her work is the result of a long commitment to abstraction; it is structured and perceptual, human and beautiful, quiet and sensitive. Her career is distinguished by her long history as an exhibiting painter, by her support of the work by other artists, and by her position in the community. 

— Chris Ashley, June 2005 

 

The following interview with Chris Ashley took place via email during April and May 2005, and included a visit to Sharon’s Jersey City studio on May 19, 2005.  For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.

 

Chris Ashley: Sharon, can you begin by talking a little bit about your background and how you came to be making the work you’re making now?

 

Sharon Brant: During my second year at the Kansas City Art Institute, I knew I would be a painter. The Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum is across the street. I saw the work of Kline, de Kooning and Gorky. As students we were trained in very traditional ways, but I was excited by forms of abstraction I saw in art magazines. In 1966, after three years of art school, I moved to New York City to be a painter. I wanted to paint abstract paintings, although it took a couple of years to realize how I was going to do that. It was kind of a jump.

The first truly abstract paintings were eight foot square canvases painted unstretched on the floor or stapled to the wall and later put on stretchers, although in my second solo exhibition I simply stapled all of the paintings to the wall – they were not on stretchers. When I worked on the loose canvas, it gave me the emotional freedom to throw the canvas away if I didn’t like the result. The idea was to not create any imagery that could be related to anything outside of the painting itself. 

The canvas was raw – unprimed, except for a pour of rhoplex, a transparent and colorless medium purchased at Pearl Paint. The pour might be a background or one element in the painting. Other elements might be one or two brush strokes, a line of spray paint, a smudge of dirt worked into the raw canvas, a few ruled graphite lines, or an orange magic marker line. Each painting would be made up of four or five of these types of elements. I was composing things used in art making and they were the subject of the painting, including bringing awareness to the canvas as another traditional art material.

I wanted paintings that were about painting – non-referential to external objects and events. The brushstrokes had to stay “brushstrokes,” lines had to stay “lines” and hopefully not make too much of a shape.

 

CA: What kinds of experiences helped determine the direction you wanted to take at that time?

 

SB: Ivan Karp had left Leo Castelli Gallery and opened O.K. Harris on the first block north of Houston Street on West Broadway – the second gallery to open in Soho. His first show was a group show, in his two big front rooms, of large abstract paintings. Everyone was talking about it and said I had to show him these paintings. I had two solo exhibitions there, one in 1970 and one in 1972.

This led to teaching painting and drawing at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. I quit the gallery. At that time I stopped making art completely. I needed to reevaluate the source of my work. Reading Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation gave me very different ideas as the basis for my work. I would make up a system, like throwing dice or dropping tiny pieces of paper with numbers on them and connecting the numbers with graphite lines, or invent a set of rules that would result in a drawing. Except for a series on pegboard I made only drawings, but later I found ways to incorporate these ideas into painting.

I would highly recommend not painting to everyone. I reconnected with why I wanted to be an artist, for whom and for what purpose. I was back in touch with my passion. It’s what I really like to do and has nothing to do with things outside myself. It was also the first time in my life I experienced being a conduit for the work as I drew. It must have been a combination of the quiet, the solitude, the focus and setting up a situation that once the mechanics of what would be done were in place, I was absolved from judgment in the drawings. Each drawing was perfect. I was a tool that brought them into being. It was a great feeling. I was teaching, had more time, and every day I was not teaching I made at least ten new drawings.

 

CA: It sounds like this kind of approach in the late 70’s and early 80’s led you to removing your ego from the work, and that this was an important experience and realization for you because then your work wasn’t just about you or personal expression. What kind of painting did this experience lead you towards?

 

SB: I poured many colors of thick acrylic onto a rigid rectangular plastic, and using a wide metal blade the width of the painting I pulled the paint from one end of the plastic to the other, so there was a uniform surface of multicolored stripes. Once it dried I could attach it to the wall at any angle. I thought of these paintings as one big brushstroke. After that I painted various rectangular areas on stretched canvas, using different drawing materials (charcoal and graphite) or painting materials applied very simply. The edges were not taped off, even though there was a lot of measuring for placement, grids, and still using the roll of the dice to determine placement of the rectangular shapes and lines. By this time in the late 1980s I was reading Gurdjieff and especially Rudolf Steiner.

 

CA: When we talked earlier you also spoke of different kinds of luminosity. There is the more literally luminous quality of paint and painting, which is an effect achieved through the use of color, surface, and drawing- that’s material and physical. There is also the quality of luminosity in one’s attentiveness while looking at your work — that’s observational. And then there is a kind of luminosity through the experience, recognition, and understanding of the paintings, which is both intellectual and psychological. The combination of these different kinds of luminosity approaches something less verbal and felt; it might be called emotional, and perhaps even spiritual. How do you think your paintings achieve this luminosity for you, firstly, and then for the viewer?

 

SB: I can create it in many different ways. It is not dependent on a particular material or particular colors. Right now, I’m painting black on the edges and white on the center. Through contrast of values there is a lot of luminosity present. I do the same thing with collage, using the most simple, dull surfaced colored papers, two colors. Putting them together and still getting the luminous relationship. It’s not dependent on the center being a lighter value, either. The center could be black and still be luminous.

Do you know this lovely quote from Emily Dickinson? “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”

In painting there is always a transmission of intention and I sometimes sense it is the intention that is shining.

 

CA: I like the idea that the artist’s intention could shine through all the other readings a work might withstand. For Dickinson a word, the basic element of her medium, when concentrated on has such power that it can shine, and for you the basic elements of a painting—the support, the surface, the color, line, the edges—have always been so carefully considered and so evident that your decisions and intentions are essential to the making and viewing of your work. It’s elegant and basic work, but difficult, too. At this time, in the late 1980’s, what kind of support did you receive for this work?

 

SB: I felt the work would be better in some kind of alternate space situation. In 1989 Nancy Azara recommended me to A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative in the U.S. Over the next seven years I had four solo exhibitions there. You can imagine that the focus of those exhibitions was what I needed to hone in on the development and refinement of the work. It is so important, always, to do the work and show the work. I also formed wonderful friendships, which I still have with excellent and dedicated artists.

 

CA: Eventually you started showing at Margaret Thatcher Projects in New York.

 

SB: Yes, Li-Trincere, who is also a Minus Space artist, introduced us. For a while Margaret was representing my work as a private dealer until she opened her gallery, and I’ve been exhibiting with her since then.

 

CA: When we spoke on the phone recently you talked about how you wanted to make paintings in which the materials – brushstrokes, paint, supports – retained their essential qualities in such a way that they weren’t subservient to some other characteristic of painting, for example, illusion or excessive expression. You referred to how you wanted to make paintings that are essential statements about painting. Am I getting that right?

 

SB: Yes.

 

CA: Your description of past work and how your earlier work developed seemed to me to emphasize drawing or making a mark. There was a kind of paring down, or paring back, so that the finished piece seems holistic, like a single image or mark. I think I see aspects of your past drawing in recent work in several ways. You are using somewhat more eccentric formats, such as narrow rectangles or thin supports that hover from the wall. There is an emphasis on edge, such as how lines or bands are drawn or placed at the outer edges of paper or panel. You are coloring edges of the support which, when viewed head-on, make a very fine band of color around the front plane. And in the framed glass works the pane of glass, whether perceived as covering a colored surface or actually being colored glass, appear as a very fine, hard, flat seamless plane. If this is so, can you elaborate on drawing in your work, and this idea of work as a kind of coherent mark, or the accumulation of marks into a single image?

 

SB: I draw a lot and there is drawing in the invisible history of the final proportions of the paintings.

In the recent horizontal paintings you see an expanse of white with a black edge around the sides and top and sometimes a little on the bottom. When I draw, I think of this edge as linear. In the paintings it is different. The edges of the aluminum or canvas – those thin edges – bring my attention to the surface of the painting and simultaneously point to the space outside that painting support, where there is sometimes another color reflecting on to the wall.

 

CA: I’m curious to know how you construct your painting’s supports. Some are quite thin panels, and some are thicker with beveled backs. You use canvas or aluminum. How do you decide the approach for each work? As you told me, painting is continual experimentation — are your various supports part of this experimentation? Does each painting, or each body of work, present a new range of decisions and challenges that make each painting new for you?

 

SB: Yes and yes. The paintings that float away from the wall and are on aluminum panels have a different color painted on the back of the panel, so that color reflects onto the wall around and beyond the hard edges of the painting, like a halo. This is another manifestation of luminosity and it is still part of what I’ve been doing for many years, which is recombining traditional art materials as a way to question where painting truly occurs. In the case of the stained glass pieces, I paint a stretched canvas white, have it framed, placing stained glass in the frame instead of clear glass. This results in a framed painting not colored by paint but by colored glass, so where is the painting and where in space does it occur?

The floating aluminum paintings have paint on the front plane and on the back of the aluminum, and then there is the surrounding wall, which is a support for reflected color from the back of the aluminum. Paint and color are not only on the surface of the support, but on the wall and out into the atmosphere. It’s sculptural, slightly three dimensional, floating away from the wall, and it is also a painting.

 

CA: That’s what you mean when you wrote before, “To give the experience of how painting is not limited to a picture plane, I sometimes use other materials along with canvas and paint.”

 

SB: Yes.

 

CA: Color and light are very important to you. You get colored light on the wall from painted edges and the colored backs of panels, and you also get colored light off the glass. At the same time the framing in some of the glass pieces seems to be containing the light, holding it in.

 

SB: Of course, color and light are interchangeable. They exist together. In some of the paintings, you are not always sure what color you’re seeing. It changes depending on where you are standing, the light in the room and different materials give different experiences of color.

 

CA: In your MINUS SPACE statement you said, “My other concern is for abstract painting and the experience of its power. I choose limited aspects that will open up the force inherent in abstract painting. I’ve found that to uncover this essence, by shearing away the extraneous, the painting becomes more powerful.” This provokes for me a number of questions about the power of abstraction and what you call its inherent force. What do you think is extraneous in painting, and how have you identified this? Why does paring painting down to some essence make it more powerful? What are you then giving the viewer and what are you asking them to do, and how is this exchange a meaningful, powerful experience?

 

SB: Arriving at a painting’s essence is not so much about taking things away as it is about distilling to its essence. Distilling is to uncover or reveal the essence of painting. If it’s diluted it doesn’t have the same strength or power. I have to be careful when adding or including that it is not diluting the intention of the entire body of work that I’m working towards establishing.

Viewing painting is not a passive activity. We all have to drop our expectations and surrender to what a painting is about. We must know to surrender. Then we must decide to surrender. And then we must actually surrender. We surrender to the work – to not have any notions or preconceived ideas, to prepare ourselves to receive whatever it is we need to receive from the work. I receive much more from exhibitions, and am happier, when I can step out of my ego to appreciate what is in front of me in the moment. It’s not about liking or not liking something. I look at a painting. I take it in. Viewing art is cumulative, and viewing over a period of time I become inwardly informed.

 

The following conversation between Alan Ebnother and Chris Ashley was conducted via email during April 17 – May 4, 2005. For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.

 

Chris Ashley: Your biography states that in 1975 you “began to recognize painting.” You were then in your early twenties and involved in the dance world. What does this mean, to “recognize painting,” and when and how did you actually begin painting?

 

Alan Ebnother: In 1975 I was 23 years old. I had just moved to Europe to be in the John Cranko Ballet School. I was friends at this time with San Francisco painters George Lawson and John Meyer, so the realization that people were involved in painting was not a new concept.

In Stuttgart where I was in dance school my roommate was married to Spanish painter Vicente Peris, an art professor from Valencia: He came to live with us and was painting everyday in the house. So, looking at painting and talking about it became a part of my daily life. I guess that to me the term to “recognize painting” means an attempt to understand it and accept it into my everyday life and thinking.

 

CA: And so when did you yourself actually begin to paint? Why did you begin, and how did you get started? Had you ever painted before?

 

AE: In 1979 I actually left my job as a dancer with the Hamburg State Opera, and painted for one year. I painted every day, without a solid direction. I was like a ship lost at sea. Embarrassingly enough, I actually had an exhibition in the lobby of the Opera house at the end of this year, selling almost all of these works. But they were horrible, expressive little religious icons- Christ’s bleeding on the cross. After realizing how bad the works actually were I quit painting until 1985, when I had the courage to start again.

 

CA: When you started painting again in 1985 where did you begin, and how did this lead to the green paintings?

 

AE: When starting again I chose to work with as few elements as possible, thinking that my energy would then be directed to the actual paint problems and issues. I was working not so much on producing a finished product, but rather experimenting with materials and the task of attempting to present color in a viable and stimulating manor. It seemed to me that if a painting was not successful or boring then adding more elements would just convolute the problem and make it less apparent. I actually wanted to deal with the problem or issue and not to hide it. I painted white squares for almost one year. I was living in Zurich, and in the basement of my building there was the storage facility for a house painting company. So every night I went down and took their plastic and covered my floor. I also took their paint and these square pieces of cardboard that they used for masking or something, and I painted all night. In the morning I returned all of their equipment except the painted squares. This continued for almost nine months until I finally found and rented a studio in Ulm, Germany.

In Ulm I began work in my studio and was painting monochrome squares until I realized that I could not paint into the corners. The paintings seemed to have a natural movement and rhythm until I came into the corners. I actually did not yet have the technical ability to paint freely in the corners, and the marking seemed stiff and contrived, so I simply tried cutting them off. The resulting circle had a freedom that I could handle. So for the next ten years I painted tondos. After about seven months I painted a Veronese green tondo which was extremely beautiful and really interested me. So, I simply tried another green painting with the same pigment but pushing it into another green tone, with yet another brush mark, and this work also interested me. So here I am twenty years later, still interested and still experimenting. Perhaps one day I will feel I have pushed green as far as I can and move on. But, presently, I work painting to painting, just following my progression of experiences. So, who knows? This is actually not a planned strategy, but just something that has happened.

 

CA: I believe for a long time you painted tondos; what meaning does that shape have for you?

 

AE: After ten years of painting tondos the shape has many meanings to me. How could I begin to put into words ten years of painting? Let’s say that I understand the circle, and by painting this form I had a little bit of time to develop my skills outside of the critic’s eye! You see, at this time nobody else was really working the tondo, so the other painters and critics had nobody and nothing else to compare me with. This gave me the necessary time that I needed to actually develop my painting skills. Interestingly enough, it was simply an experience with another painter which made me paint another square. One day I had a studio visit with Ulrich Wellmann, a German painter. He commented that he liked my paintings, but not the fact that they were round. His argument was that there was no top or bottom. I argued that a square had only four possibilities for a top and bottom and that a tondo had endless possibilities. After he left, I was so mad and frustrated that I stretched up four small squares and painted them. The amazing thing was that they looked liked paintings even before I painted them. Everybody is so used to seeing the rectangular form in everyday life. This is an architectural form common to our eye. The circle was always something alien or new. A rectangle resembles the form that humans have become conditioned to expect a painting to resemble; it seemed so easy after the circle. I must actually say that now in painting my corners this is the area where I enjoy experimenting the most, and where I tend to mimic the linear borders imposed by this shape. Some day I shall go back and paint the circle again.

 

CA: Can you talk specifically about the various characteristics of your paintings? Maybe you could discuss your different stretcher sizes and shapes. What about different brushes, sizes, and brush strokes? And do you grind your own paint? How do you approach each work so individually?

 

AE: All right let’s speak about December 17th 2004[1]. This was a very complex stretcher, 38 1/2 X 38 inches, so there is just a one half inch more height giving the viewer a vertical work and not a landscape format. Not visible in the photo is the thickness or depth of the stretcher which is 1 3/4 inches thick at the top and 3 inches thick at the bottom. So the back of the painting plane runs parallel with the wall and the front painting plane is thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top (like a wedge of cheese). The bottom of the paint surface is pushed out into the light. I paint with skylights, so the light is coming from above. I ordered two stretchers in these proportions as an experiment and then attempted to paint my way out of the problem caused by the sculptural, 3D effect of the wedge. I painted against the form using marks that drew the attention to the top and upper middle portions of the painting and then gradually faded out the surface leaving just enough information to present the bottom of the work in a few areas, but not in its entirety. I was simply drawing attention away from the form. The non-critical viewer does not realize that the canvas is so dramatically wedge shaped. I have completed two of these wedge painted and am OK with the finished results, but as I am not working as a sculptor and have other painting problems to deal with they will also be the last.

I have mixed and ground my own pigments from the first year of my career. George Lawson, who I mentioned earlier, and Phil Sims were both so generous in sharing all of their knowledge and experience at the time with me, and basically taught me how to do this. In the meantime my experimental nature has led me to explore many areas of pigment and different oil-based mediums, and after twenty-odd years I seem to have a fairly good grasp of oil paint.

You also asked about brushes. Well, each different mark has a different brush that seems to lend itself to it. I usually shape the hairs myself with scissors and then grind down the ends of the bristles to keep them from splitting. I customize the brush for many different reasons- for shape, drag, stiffness thickness etc. I also often cut down the wooden shaft to make it an extension of my hand and wrist, or sometimes change the shaft to make it longer and an extension of my arm or body. This depends on the sort of mark that I decide would be an interesting or correct mark to present a particular color with. While mixing the color I am able to watch the different changes that occur with the addition of different pigments, clay, balsams, or wax to this mass. Sometimes there are close to a hundred different hues that I happen to see and work thru before I decide to stop. One of the reasons that I used this Veronese green for so long was that it is a very transparent pigment with very weak personal strengths that lends itself to be pushed in many different directions, while keeping its drying and textural proprieties.

 

CA: What is the connection- physically, emotionally, aesthetically, philosophically- between your painting and your past work in the dance world?

 

AE: Learning to dance means many things, and the connections between dance and painting could be talked about for hundreds of pages. I don’t really have enough words for all the connections, but let me try. The feeling of doing a tendu, a basic ballet movement where the leg is extended straight out from the supporting leg with the foot fully pointed, is much the same feeling as creating a brush stroke. With a tendu I would gently and forcefully rub the sole of my foot along the floor. At the same time, my foot and leg would fight to become extended. I felt as though I was making love to the floor. I feel this same way when dragging a brush laden with paint across a surface! Painting is a very sensual and tactile experience, as is dance. Both rely on instinctual decisions, with the critical eye entering and judging after the act.

 

CA: The way you compare painting and dance makes me think of course of the often-quoted description of the Abstract Expressionists by Harold Rosenberg, “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act – rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or ‘express’ an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.” But I suspect that this description doesn’t match your intentions because your work is more than an arena for an event. You are also concerned with constructing space and light, and with making an expressive image and an integrated object. Do you have any thoughts about your work in relation to Abstract Expressionism, and what you’re trying to make that is beyond an event?

 

AE: The act of painting is perhaps dramatic and perhaps a performance, but it is a performance just for me! My paintings are not about drama or theater, but about color and defining space with this color. Exploring the prairie, perhaps, but not about the theater. Painting is not a performing art form. I am attempting to present a color with what I believe to be a rhythm, mark and time that best suits it. This drama takes place in a studio with only one spectator (me), and when the drama is over the traces left on my linen are a painting.

 

CA: I remember that in the first or second email you sent to me almost two years ago you boldly exclaimed the beauty of the light in New Mexico. For years you lived and painted in Germany. The light and space of these two places is quite different. What brought you to New Mexico, and how did these two locations affect your painting? What does green mean in each place? It looks to me like your paint is getting thicker and more lush. I think your current studio is much larger than your German studio- if so, how is this affecting the paintings?

 

AE: I moved to New Mexico for the light and land inexpensive enough that I could afford to build a studio here. My studio is about 4000 square feet and twenty three feet high. I could actually construct an airplane in here. I designed it for the light, with all my attention going in this direction rather than for comfort. The light in here is the best that I have ever experienced! I was painting in Germany and then bringing works over to New Mexico for shows and seeing the actual color for the first time when hanging the painting up in New Mexico. German light is very grey and silvery but almost never bright and clear. In my first visits I could not even walk around outside in New Mexico without sunglasses. This is truly a case of light affecting or becoming the painting.

Well, back to marking- I have been trying to open up the painting for some time now. This task is not new, and is something that has been on my mind for several years and has had a lot to do with my move here. I am in the middle of nowhere. This is empty space. I want to bring this space onto the canvas. It seems to be a slow process, but it is finally working and is completely my goal. To define this empty space with a reduced amount of color, that is painting for me. Clyfford Still was on to something, and I would really like to go back and pick up his sensibility and morals and continue, but with simply one color.

Thinking about what we have spoken of so far I feel the need to also say something about this phenomenon happening with many monochrome painters of simply painting the same painting time and time again. It is simply not enough to change the color and paint the next work with the same concept and markings as the last work. Every different hue has a new way of application that exposes more or less the individual characteristics existing within it. The exploration of these characteristics is an important part of my work (perhaps is my work) and I feel something needs to be said about it. This exploration is one of the key elements in the work of many very established painters, such as Robert Ryman, where for him not just the paint application comes into play but his choice of methods for attaching the painting to the wall or the actual date and signature on the work become a pivotal piece of the composition. Each painting has its own paint structure, signature, date concept, and wall attachment. The color hue remains fairly constant with the actual paint mass radically changing. Ryman has explored a small avenue of painting without reaching boredom.

Look at Joseph Marioni and his subtle changing of the supports which corresponds to the individual choice of colors, opening or closing the top surface veils of color presenting differently sized and shaped windows into the work. This subtle yet earth-shattering attention to detail presents a path for the young painters of today. Perhaps thirty years ago, when this genre of painting was new, one could simply change color and create the department store effect of a “red one or a blue one or a green one.” But today we have progressed way beyond this point, and to continue to just produce work that resembles a product with your name on it, with little or no change or growth within it, is simply parasitic. The general practitioner (house doctor) of the past is gone. We have entered an era of specialists, in painting and in technology.

Abstract art is still a new concept, and it is in the hands of today’s artists to push and develop this concept further along. The changes do not have to be large and the directions don’t have to be specific, but an exploration of the genre itself must transpire in order to keep it alive. The public cannot be relied on to support this exploration, as they are basically still content with watching Swan Lake, listening to Mozart, and viewing Rembrandt, all of which are wonderful but transpired long ago. Historically speaking, progress in the fine art fields has not always been immediately accepted by the audience, so it is literally in the hands of today’s painters to support and push this exploration forward, regardless of the response from the viewing public.

 

CA: It can sometimes be helpful- and sometimes not- to talk about an artist’s work in relation to other art work. We’ve already talked about dance, and you mentioned Ryman and Marioni. What other painters are important to you, and why?

 

AE: Joseph Marioni is very important to me for completely different reasons than Ryman. Joe’s progress can be extremely difficult to perceive as the changes, improvements, and differences are all quite subtle to the uninformed eye. But once you begin to be aware of the vast amount of “improvements” or refinements that are taking place, canvas to canvas, the hunger to see more becomes insatiable. Watching Marioni’s or Ryman’s painting reminds me of people that first come to the desert and say that there is no vegetation or wildlife. On closer observation the desert opens itself to their vision and a complete world of plant and animal life becomes apparent. Everything is there waiting for the viewer to educate him or herself.

 

CA: Talk about the kind of space that you are after in your paintings. In some of the recent work the paint seems very thick; the brush strokes are extremely visible and present. One can almost see your strokes as a kind of allover calligraphy, and there is something about the space in some of your paintings that seems to build into a space like, for example de Kooning’s ribbons of color that are layered and overlapping, and working with and against gravity.

 

AE: Well, each painting is different. There is no master plan that I can refer to for additional information! I have never studied calligraphy but comparing my internal space to de Kooning would be the work of an art critic, not a painter. Why not compare Ryman and Monet, or Ter Borch and Umberg? From my viewpoint there is often nothing similar about any of these artists’s work except the materials. Perhaps an art critic could find something similar and compare them with each other, but for me each and every painter has his own dialogue and nuances that wait to be discovered by the viewer. To attempt a comparison would be an attempt at defining or categorizing a particular artist, which would only make the public stop looking. If you go into one of the larger, more popular exhibitions in a museum today you are faced with masses of humans reading wall texts or listening to tape recorded comments about the individual paintings. At that moment these people actually stop viewing and stop experiencing the work in exchange for some art critic’s explanation. THERE IS NO EXPLANATION FOR ART. IT MUST BE EXPERIENCED!

[1] December 17th 2004, 2004, Oil on linen, 38.5 x 38 inches

 

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La seguente conversazione tra Alan Ebnother e Chris Ashley è stata condotta via email nel periodo compreso tra il 17 Aprile e il 4 Maggio 2005.

 

Chris Ashley: La Sua biografia dice che nel 1975 “cominciò a riconoscere l’arte.” In quel periodo lei aveva poco più di vent’anni e si muoveva nel mondo della danza. Cosa significa questo “riconoscere l’arte” e come e quando cominciò a dipingere?

 

Alan Ebnother: Nel 1975 avevo 23 anni. Mi ero appena trasferito in Europa per studiare alla John Cranio Ballet School. I pittori George Lawson e John Meyer, entrambi di San Francisco, erano miei amici e così l’idea che delle persone dipingessero non era per me nuova.

A Stoccarda, dove frequentavo la scuola di danza, la mia coinquilina era sposata con il pittore spagnolo Vicente Peris, un professore d’arte di Valencia: lui venne ad abitare con noi e dipingeva ogni giorno nella nostra casa. Così osservare dipinti e parlare d’arte divenne parte della mia vita quotidiana. Credo che per me “riconoscere l’arte” significa un tentativo di capirla e accettarla nella mia vita e nei miei pensieri quotidiani.

 

CA: E Lei quando iniziò effettivamente a dipingere? Come mai si mise a dipingere e come cominciò? Aveva già dipinto prima?

 

AE: Nel 1979 ho lasciato il mio lavoro come ballerino all’opera di Amburgo e ho dipinto per un anno intero. Dipingevo giornalmente senza una direzione precisa. Ero come una nave che si è persa nell’oceano. Mi imbarazza un po’, ma alla fine dell’anno ho persino esposto i miei quadri nell’atrio dell’opera e ho venduto quasi tutto. In ogni caso erano orribili, piccole icone religiose – Cristo sanguinante sulla croce. Appena ho capito quanto erano brutti i miei quadri ho smesso di dipingere fino nel 1985, quando ho trovato il coraggio di ricominciare.

 

CA: Quando ha ricominciato a dipingere nel 1985 da dove iniziò? Come cominciò a dipingere quadri verdi?

 

AE: Quando ricominciai a dipingere scelsi di lavorare con meno elementi possibile, pensando che in questo modo la mia energia si sarebbe concentrata sui problemi della pittura. Non lavoravo tanto per realizzare un prodotto finito, ma più che altro per sperimentare i materiali e presentare i colori in modo avvincente e vitale. Prima pensavo che se un quadro non riusciva o sembrava noioso, aggiungere degli elementi avrebbe reso meno apparente o addirittura risolto il problema. In un secondo tempo volevo occuparmi del problema e risolverlo, non solo nasconderlo. Ho dipinto quadrati bianchi per quasi un anno. Abitavo a Zurigo e nello scantinato del mio palazzo c’era il magazzino di una ditta di imbianchini. Così ogni notte andavo in cantina e prendevo le loro plastiche per coprire il mio pavimento. Prendevo anche la loro pittura e quei quadrati di cartone che usavano per mascherare o qualche cosa del genere, e così dipingevo ogni notte. La mattina riportavo tutto il loro materiale, eccetto i quadrati che avevo dipinto. Questa storia continuò per nove mesi fino a quando trovai ed affittai uno studio a Ulm in Germania.

A Ulm iniziai a dipingere nel mio studio e dipingevo quadrati monocromatici fino a quando mi accorsi che non riuscivo a dipingere negli angoli. La pittura sembrava seguire un flusso e un ritmo naturale fino a quando giungevo negli angoli. Non avevo ancora l’abilità tecnica di dipingere liberamente gli angoli, e il segno sembrava rigido e artificioso, così cominciai a lasciarli via. Il risultato fu un cerchio la cui libertà riuscivo a gestire. Il risultato fu che per i seguenti dieci anni dipinsi dei tondi. Dopo circa 7 mesi dipinsi un tondo in verde veronese che secondo me era estremamente bello e interessante. Di conseguenza provai un altro dipinto verde con lo stesso pigmento ma direzionandolo verso un’altra tonalità di verde e con un altro tipo di pennello, e anche questo lavoro mi piacque e interessò molto. Così, vent’anni dopo, eccomi ancora qua, sempre ancora interessato e in fase sperimentale. Forse un giorno avrò l’impressione di aver portato il verde al limite e potrò passare a un nuovo tema. Ma al momento lavoro dipinto dopo dipinto seguendo la mia progressione d’esperienza. E quindi chissà? Questa non è una strategia pianificata, ma una cosa che è semplicemente capitata.

 

CA: Per un lungo periodo ha dipinto tondi, che significato ha per Lei questa forma?

 

AE: Dopo aver dipinto tondi per dieci anni, questa forma ha per me molti significati. Come posso spiegare a parole dieci anni di lavoro? Mi lasci dire che capisco il cerchio, e che dipingendo questa forma ho avuto un po’ di tempo per sviluppare le mie capacità lontano dagli occhi dei critici! Vede, durante questo periodo nessun altro lavorava il tondo, così altri pittori e critici non avevano nessuno e nient’altro con cui paragonarmi. Ciò mi ha dato il tempo necessario che mi serviva per sviluppare le mie capacità. Forse è interessante sapere che è stata semplicemente l’esperienza con un altro pittore che mi ha riportato a dipingere un quadrato. Un giorno Ulrich Wellmann, un pittore tedesco, visitò il mio studio. Mi disse che i miei quadri gli piacevano, ma non la loro forma tonda. Il motivo era che non avevano una parte superiore e una inferiore. Io gli dissi che un quadrato ha soltanto quattro possibilità per un sopra e un sotto, mentre un tondo ne ha infinite. Quando se ne andò ero così arrabbiato e frustrato che tesi quattro tele di forma quadrata. La cosa incredibile è che mi sembravano quadri già prima di dipingerli. Tutti siamo abituati a vedere la forma rettangolare nella vita quotidiana, è una forma architettonica conosciuta al nostro occhio. Il cerchio invece è sempre stata una forma aliena o nuova. Il genere umano è stato condizionato ad aspettarsi che un quadro assomigli alla forma di un rettangolo; sembrava così facile dopo il tondo. Devo dire che ora dipingere negli angoli mi piace soprattutto per sperimentare, tendo a copiare i bordi lineari imposti da questa forma. Forse un giorno tornerò a dipingere il cerchio.

 

CA: Potrebbe parlarci specificamente delle varie caratteristiche dei suoi quadri? Magari spiegando le forme e misure delle tele e le grandezze dei pennelli usati? Mischia e macina Lei stesso i colori? Come approccia ogni lavoro?

 

AE: Va bene, parliamo del 17 dicembre 2004. Ho usato una tela molto complessa, 38,5 x 38 pollici, così che c’è solo mezzo pollice in più nell’altezza per dare all’osservatore un lavoro verticale e non un formato panoramico. Nelle foto non sono visibili la grossezza e profondità della tela di 1 ¾ pollici sopra e di 3 pollici sotto. In questo modo la parte dietro del quadro è parallela al muro, mentre davanti è più fine sopra e più grossa sotto (come una fetta di formaggio). Così la parte inferiore è spinta nella luce. Dipingo con luce naturale dall’alto. Ho ordinato due tele con queste misure per sperimentare e trovare una via per risolvere il problema causato dall’effetto scultura tridimensionale della tela. Ho dipinto contro la forma usando punti marcanti che attiravano l’attenzione sulla parte superiore del quadro e sfumavo gradualmente la superficie lasciando in fondo soltanto le informazioni necessarie in poche aree per presentare il lavoro, ma non nella sua completezza. Cercavo semplicemente di distogliere l’attenzione dalla forma. L’osservatore non critico non si accorge che la tela ha una forma così irregolare. Ho completato due lavori di questo tipo e sono abbastanza soddisfatto del risultato, ma siccome non sono uno scultore e ho altri problemi inerenti alla pittura da risolvere, questi due lavori sono anche gli ultimi di questo tipo.

Ho mischiato e macinato i miei pigmenti dal primo anno della mia carriera. George Lawson, che ho menzionato prima, e Phil Sims sono stati così generosi da dividere tutto il loro sapere e le loro esperienze con me e mi hanno fondamentalmente insegnato come fare. Nel frattempo la mia natura sperimentale mi ha portato ad esplorare molte aree di pigmenti e diversi media con base ad olio, e dopo più di vent’anni credo di avere una conoscenza abbastanza buona della pittura ad olio.

Mi ha anche chiesto dei pennelli. Ebbene, ogni marca sembra avere un pennello che è adatto. Normalmente taglio le setole con una forbice io stesso e poi macino la fine delle setole così che non slittano. Modifico il pennello per diverse esigenze – per forma, resistenza, rigidità, grossezza, ecc. Spesso taglio anche il manico di legno così da renderlo un’estensione della mia mano e del mio polso, oppure ogni tanto allungo il manico così che diventa un’estensione del mio braccio o del mio corpo. Questo dipende anche dal tipo di segno che penso sarebbe interessante o corretto per presentare un certo colore. Mentre mischio il colore posso osservare i cambiamenti che capitano quando aggiungo alla massa diversi pigmenti, argille, balsami o cera. Ogni tanto mi capita di osservare fino a cento diverse tinte prima di decidere di smettere. Uno dei motivi per cui ho utilizzato il verde Veronese per tanto tempo è che è un pigmento molto trasparente con poca forza personale e può quindi essere spinto in molte direzioni diverse, pur mantenendo le sue qualità di seccatura e struttura.

 

CA: Quale è il nesso – fisicamente, emotivamente, esteticamente, filosoficamente – tra la Sua pittura e il Suo passato nel mondo della danza?

 

AE: Imparare a danzare ha molti significati, e il nesso tra la danza e la pittura può essere discusso in centinaia di pagine. Non ho abbastanza parole per spiegare tutte le relazioni, ma lasciatemi provare. La sensazione che si prova facendo un tendu, un movimento di base del balletto dove la gamba è estesa ad angolo retto dal corpo con il piede a punta, è simile all’emozione che si prova creando una spennellata. Per fare un tendu strofino dolcemente ma con forza la suola del mio piede contro il pavimento. Allo stesso tempo il mio piede e la mia gamba combattono per diventare estese. Sembra di fare l’amore con il pavimento. Provo le stesse emozioni quanto trascino un pennello pieno di pittura su una superficie! Dipingere è un’esperienza tattile e molto sensuale, come lo è la danza. Entrambe si basano su decisioni istintive, con l’occhio critico che entra e giudica dopo l’atto.

 

CA: Il modo in cui mi descrive la relazione tra danza e pittura mi fa pensare evidentemente alla spesso citata descrizione dell’espressionismo astratto di Harold Rosenberg: “In un certo momento le tele cominciarono ad apparire agli occhi di un pittore americano dopo l’altro come un’arena in cui agire – piuttosto che uno spazio dove riprodurre, ridisegnare, analizzare o esprimere un oggetto, reale o immaginario. Ciò che doveva apparire su una tela non era un disegno, ma un evento.” Ma sospetto che questa descrizione non corrisponda alle Sue intenzioni, in quanto il Suo lavoro è più di un’arena per un evento. Lei si preoccupa anche di costruire spazio e luce, di creare un’immagine espressiva e un oggetto integrato. Ha dei pensieri sul suo lavoro in relazione all’espressionismo astratto, e ciò che cerca di fare che è al di là di un evento?

 

AE: L’atto di pitturare è forse drammatico e forse una performance, ma è una performance solo per me! I miei dipinti non hanno come tema il teatro o lo spettacolo, ma il colore e la definizione di spazio per mezzo di questo colore. Forse esplorano la prateria, ma non il teatro. La pittura non è un’arte di performance. Cerco di presentare un colore con ciò che credo essere un ritmo, segno e tempo che meglio gli si adatta. Questo dramma si svolge in uno studio con un solo spettatore (me), e quando il dramma è terminato le tracce lasciate sulla mia tela sono un dipinto.

 

CA: Ricordo che nel primo o secondo email che mi mandò quasi due anni fa, si mostrò sorpreso per la bellezza della luce in New Mexico. Per anni visse e dipinse in Germania. La luce e lo spazio in questi due luoghi è abbastanza differente. Cosa la partò in New Mexico e come influenzarono la sua pittura questi due luoghi diversi? Cosa significa il verde in entrambi i posti? Personalmente mi sembra che la sua pittura stia diventando più spessa e ricca. Credo che il suo atelier attuale sia molto più grande di quello in Germania – questo fatto come influenza la sua pittura?

 

AE: Mi sono trasferito in New Mexico per via della luce e della terra a buon prezzo, così che ho potuto costruirmi un atelier. Il mio atelier è molto grande e alto, potrei in effetti costruirci dentro un aeroplano. L’ho disegnato io stesso, prestando particolare attenzione alla luce e meno al comfort. La luce in questo atelier è la migliore che ho mai visto! Dipingevo in Germania e portavo i miei quadri ad esposizioni qui in New Mexico, dove per la prima volta vedevo il vero colore dei dipinti. La luce in Germania è molto grigia e argentea, ma quasi mai chiara e luminosa. Durante le mie prime visite in New Mexico non riuscivo neanche a passeggiare all’esterno senza gli occhiali da sole. Questo è veramente un caso di luce che influenza o addirittura diventa un dipinto.

Ho cercato di aprire la mia pittura già da qualche tempo. Questo compito non mi è nuovo, è nella mia mente da anni e ha avuto molto a che fare con il mio trasferimento qui in New Mexico. Sono nel mezzo del niente. Questo è uno spazio vuoto. Voglio riuscire a portare questo spazio sulla tela. È un processo lento, ma che sembra finalmente riuscire. È il mio traguardo. Definire questo spazio vuoto con un numero ridotto di colori, questo per me significa dipingere. Clyfford Still era sulla buona via, e io vorrei tornare indietro e riprendere la sua sensibilità e morale e continuare il suo lavoro, ma semplicemente con un solo colore.

Pensando a tutto ciò che abbiamo detto, vorrei dire anche due parole sul fenomeno che capita a molti pittori monocromatici che dipingono sempre di nuovo lo stesso quadro.Non basta semplicemente cambiare il colore e dipingere il lavoro seguente con lo stesso concetto. Ogni colore necessita di un metodo di pittura diverso per mettere in luce al meglio le sue proprietà intrinseche. L’esplorazione di queste proprietà è una parte molto importante del mio lavoro, magari è addirittura il mio lavoro e per questo credo di dover dire qualche cosa al riguardo. Questa esplorazione è uno degli elementi chiave nel lavoro di molti pittori conosciuti, come Robert Ryman, per il quale non solo il metodo di dipingere, ma anche il modo nel quale attaccava i suoi quadri ai muri o addirittura la data e la firma sul dipinto diventavano un elemento fondamentale della composizione. La tinta resta abbastanza costante mentre cambia radicalmente la massa del colore. Ryman ha esplorato una piccola strada della pittura senza mai raggiungere la monotonia.

Guarda anche Joseph Marioni e il suo sottile cambiamento dei sostegni che corrisponde con l’individuale scelta del colore, che apre o chiude i veli di colore sopra al dipinto presentando finestre di diversa grandezza e forma nel quadro. Questa sottile ma importante attenzione al dettaglio presenta un percorso per i giovani pittori di oggi. Forse trent’anni fa, quando questo genere di pittura era nuovo, uno poteva semplicemente cambiare colore e creare l’effetto grande magazzino di “quello rosso, quello blu o quello verde”. Ma oggi siamo di gran lunga oltre questo punto, e continuare a produrre lavori che assomigliano a un prodotto con su il tuo nome e che cambiano di poco o non cambiano e crescono del tutto, è semplicemente parassitico. Il (medico) generico del passato è sparito. Siamo in un’era di specialisti, nella pittura e nella tecnologia.

L’arte astratta è ancora un concetto nuovo, e sta nelle mani degli artisti di oggi spingere e sviluppare questo concetto. I cambiamenti non devono essere grandi e le direzioni non specifiche, ma il genere deve essere esplorato così da restare vivo. Non ci possiamo fidare del pubblico per il supporto di queste esplorazioni, in quanto si accontentano sempre ancora di guardare il Lago dei Cigni, ascoltare Mozart, e guardare Rembrandt, opere sì stupende, ma create molto tempo fa. Storicamente il progresso dell’arte non è sempre stato accettato immediatamente dal pubblico, quindi sta nelle mani degli artisti di oggi sostenere e spingere l’esplorazione in avanti, indipendentemente dalla risposta del pubblico.

 

CA: Ogni tanto può essere d’aiuto, e ogni tanto no, parlare del lavoro di un artista in relazione ad altri lavori d’arte. Abbiamo già parlato di danza, e Lei ha menzionato Ryman e Marioni. Quali altri artisti sono importanti per Lei e perché?

 

AE: Joseph Marioni è molto importante per me per motivi completamente diversi di Ryman. I progressi di Joe possono essere estremamente difficili da percepire da un occhio inesperto in quanto i cambiamenti, i miglioramenti e le differenze sono estremamente sottili. Ma una volta che si comincia a vedere il numero elevato di miglioramenti realizzati da tela a tela, la fame di scoprirne di più diventa insaziabile. Osservare i dipinti di Marioni o Ryman mi ricorda le persone che vengono per la prima volta nel deserto e dicono che non c’è vegetazione o vita selvaggia. Ma quando osserviamo più attentamente, il deserto si apre alla nostra vista e il completo mondo vegetale e animale diventa visibile. È tutto lì ad aspettare che l’osservatore educhi se stesso.

 

CA: Ci parli dello spazio nei suoi dipinti. In alcuni dipinti recenti la pittura sembra molto grossa; le pennellate sono molto visibili e presenti. Uno riesce quasi a vedere le pennellate come una specie di calligrafia, e c’è qualcosa nello spazio dei suoi dipinti che sembra creare uno spazio particolare, come per esempio i nastri di colore di de Kooning che sono stratificati e sovrapposti, lavorando con e contro la forza di gravità.

 

AE: Ebbene, ogni dipinto è diverso. Non c’è un progetto generale a cui posso rivolgermi per ulteriori informazioni! Non ho mai studiato calligrafia ma confrontare il mio spazio interno a quello di de Kooning sarebbe il lavoro di un critico d’arte e non di un pittore. Perché non confrontare Ryman e Monte, oppure Ter Borch e Umberg? Dal mio punto di vista spesso non c’è niente di simile nei lavori di questi artisti, a parte il materiale. Magari un critico d’arte può trovare delle proprietà comuni e confrontarle, ma per me ogni artista ha il suo proprio dialogo e le proprie sfumature che aspettano di essere scoperte dall’osservatore. Provare a fare un confronto vorrebbe dire cercare di definire e categorizzare l’artista, il che porterebbe l’osservatore a smettere di guardare. Se oggigiorno si va in uno dei musei più grandi e più conosciuti, ci si trova faccia a faccia con masse di persone che stanno leggendo testi affissi sui muri o che stanno ascoltando messaggi registrati su cassetta e che spiegano i singoli dipinti. In questo momento queste persone smettono di guardare e sperimentare il dipinto in cambio di una spiegazione di qualche critico d’arte. NON C’È UNA SPIEGAZIONE PER L’ARTE. L’ARTE DEVE ESSERE SPERIMENTATA!

 

Alan Ebnother vive e lavora a Stanley, New Mexico

Chris Ashley è un artista, scrittore ed educatore. Vive e lavora a Oakland, California

Translated into Italian by Tina Ammann

 

Agnes Martin, by Steve Karlik

I went for a walk yesterday; a thin veil of snow cloaked the sidewalk. 

At once, grids became apparent. 

The accumulation of packed snow in the concrete’s seams made opaque grids, grids that were again defined by planes of less dense, more transparent layers of snow that covered the higher surfaces. 

The combination of these lines and planes brought me back to painting and why painting has significance for me. 

Reason, logic, the man made: the systems and structures within which we navigate that need to be expressed because we navigate them. 

I saw what I needed to think about. 

Where the snow began to melt the planes fell away and the grids softened, I was reminded, as I am with Agnes Martin’s work, that with structure there is always the poetic that defines it.

 

Agnes Martin, by Kevin Finklea

“I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect — completely removed in fact — even as we ourselves are.”

This is the opening of the Notes section of Agnes Martin’s Writings/Schriften (1991, Hatze Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany). 

I found myself opening this book for the first time in many years. This book essentially replaced the scattered notes, xeroxes and catalog quotations I had gathered over the years from Agnes Martin. I held on to this and Profile: Agnes Martin (vol. 1, no. 2, March 1981, Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois). While there is much that I can say about her work that was and remains important to me; it was her writing and interviews that were of the greatest use to me as a young artist. Her ruminations on investigation, truth and perfection are absolutely peerless.

My recent interview with MINUS SPACE suddenly sprang to mind. I recalled saying that nothing I paint is perfect. I then used the word approximation to further describe my work’s perceived perfectness. I have to admit a wave of embarassment came over me. While I felt momentarily like a plagerist, I soon realized that I had actually internalized and put into practice much of what Martin had to say about painting. It is employing this sense of self-analysis and reflection that was Martin’s greatest contribution to non-objective painters. I can not encourage young non-objective painters enough to read what she had to say. I offer the following from Profile: Agnes Martin:

“The work of artists is an investigation into truth, and you’re going to see it in your mind, you own mind.”

 

Thoughts on Agnes, by Douglas Witmer

There was record flooding in south central Pennsylvania, where I grew up, in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. I was too young to remember the event, but the phrase “flood of Agnes” was often spoken in my childhood. I didn’t know Agnes was a woman’s name. The sound of it definitely left an impression. This is an aside, though…

I long fancied making a visit to Taos to visit Agnes Martin. I read she took visitors. I never knew what I would ask or say, though. Words tend to drop away for me when it comes to her work.

I believe I did not actually “see” the first Agnes Martin painting I was exposed to. It was likely “The Rose,” which sometimes hangs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the time was probably in the late 1980s. It took interacting with the work of my mentor Warren Rohrer, who shared affinities with Agnes, for my consciousness to be opened.

I’ve begun to think that’s how some work is — invisible until its viewer is ready to see.

In my upbringing I was encouraged to “be in the world but not of the world” and this is definitely a feeling I got from Agnes’ work. The feeling was bolstered as I learned more about her life and writing.

The story of her move to the desert, building a house by hand (one account made it sound like she began by putting adobe around her camper and worked outward from there) and of her “quitting” painting for the better part of a decade: I find all of that an inspiring example of taking an alternative path. I wrestle personally, though, with the viability of that kind of asceticism for an artist of my generation.

Seeing her early work at Dia:Beacon this past fall was a true highlight. Whereas her gridded paintings could at times seem a closed system, cutting themselves off from the world, the early works were incredibly open, humble, innocent, and vulnerable. I could see they came from a special time and place. I am very curious about her decision to revisit some of those images in what was her last exhibition at Pace Wildenstein.

I made a special trip to see those paintings in real life. I’m glad I did, but they made me sad because in them I felt like I could see that Agnes no longer possessed the physical mechanics. The paint quality didn’t carry the images like it had before.

Her paintings, like all reductive or distilled work, have such possibility for total failure. In this (our) kind of work, it’s a real accomplishment when feel you have made a success. Agnes’ work for so long had all the parts in play so beautifully and I am thankful to be able to experience that.

 

Meeting Agnes Martin, by Sharon Brant

In 1973 Agnes Martin was in New York City. I think she was here in preparation for a retrospective of her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This may have been the first retrospective for her, because she was not famous in a widespread way as she is now. Mostly, painters knew and loved her work.

Somehow I heard, maybe through the art world grapevine, she was going to give a talk at Cooper Union. I was excited and could not believe my good fortune. She was a painter I admired very much and I was going to be in her presence. This was an unusual event because she had left NYC a long time ago and was living in New Mexico in a reclusive way.

The group that had gathered was not huge. It wasn’t held in Cooper Union’s big auditorium. It was in a classroom. She spoke slowly and carefully, as if she had prepared succinctly the entire talk. At one point she was silent for a really long time, as if she was trying to remember what she wanted to say next. Now, regardless of its reason, the combination of this silence and succinctness is so appropriate, because it’s what we experience in her paintings. I don’t remember the specifics of her talk, but I remember the stance about painting she embodied as she stood before us. The way I would put it is that she made paying attention to her thoughts and attitudes the main purpose of her life and that painting then developed out of that awareness. Yes, the painting comes out of how we live our lives.

 

Agnes Martin, by Chris Ashley

I learned about Agnes Martin as an undergrad in the San Francisco Bay Area, around 1976. I had an early, natural attraction to abstract art, even as young as 11 or 12; on a trip to the Oakland Museum with my grandmother around 1968 I was as interested in Bierstadt [1], as, say, Hassel Smith [2]. I thought that a painting is a painting: they all deserve to be looked at, and that they weren’t that easy to make. Adults said that a child could make that, but I didn’t agree; I couldn’t make one, and I thought there was something going on there besides the skilled (or unskilled) representation of a person, tree, cow, or table top. I don’t know why I knew that so young.

At age 18 or 19 I suddenly had access to a college library with freely available back issues of art magazines, which I studied pretty closely in the stacks. I particularly liked Art International and Artforum. This, combined with access to SFMOMA, the de Young and Legion of Honor, the Oakland Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, were the real foundation of my education, rather than the studio classes I took, where I pretty much ended up doing whatever I wanted to do anyway.

I became really intrigued by what was usually called minimalist painting: Ryman, Marden, Novros, Berthot, Humphrey, etc., in NY; Charlton, Greene in the UK; the Swiss — Lohse, Bill; BMPT in France: Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, and Toroni; as well as lots of others. I was really interested in a number of question: what is a painting; how could so little could provoke so much looking; what is the basis for the artist of this kind of work; is this a reduction or expansion of painting, i.e., is minimalist painting additive (starting from zero) or subtractive (a removing from painting of other subjects, techniques, concerns); how are decisions made by the artist; what are the differences between similar kinds of work, and how does an individual resist the urge to fix things up, design, and decorate.

The problem was that in the SF Bay Area I found little exposure to this work (that would change around 1979-80 when two SF galleries — Modernism and Shirley Cerf — were actively showing Saxon, Hayward, Tchakalian, Marioni, Hafif, Gimblett, Sims, Lawson, to name a few). I was trying to figure it out through reproductions, all the while still looking closely at Bay Area figurative artists like Diebenkorn, Park, Bischoff, Brown, and Neri.

I recall on a late afternoon in 1976 buying a copy of Art News (vol. 75, no. 7, September 1976) [3] at the Oakland Museum. A Rembrandt self portrait is on the cover, and inside is a multi-page article about Agnes Martin. I remember that I bought the magazine because of this article; I had seen her name before. I remember walking down the street carrying the magzine, eager to read it later. I clearly recall that the sun was out, light was bouncing off the sidewalk, and it was warm and a little windy. I still have this issue.

The article covered Martin’s history, talked about her leaving New York, the film she made called “Gabriel,” and discussed her new work. I believe the occasion of the article had to do with her first show of new work since she began painting again in 1974. What made an impression on me was the way she wrote and spoke. I had just read Alan Watts’ “The Book,” and I think I’d also begun Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Martin’s thoughts and ideas were in this realm, but she spoke as a painter. I was immediately struck by her statement, “Anyone can look at a waterfall all day.” Having read that, I had just then learned a new way to approach a painting and to understand and talk about looking.

I first saw an actual painting by Agnes Martin in 1977; I vividly remember the moment. I walked into a gallery at SFMOMA, at the old building in the Veteran’s War Memorial Building near the City Hall; it was one of the inner galleries just around the corner from the elevators. There it hung, and I instantly knew who the artist was. I felt happy, as if I’d discovered something.

“Falling Blue,” 1963 [4], is six feet square, oil and pencil on canvas which actually looks like coarse, dark linen. Horizontal pencil lines perhaps half an inch apart are ruled to the edges of a framing border of bare canvas two inches or so on all four sides. In between the penciled horizontal lines dark violet-blue is painted in repeated strokes with a small brush from one side to the other; the blue line is brushed horizontally as far as the paint the brush can carry lasts, and then the brush is loaded with more paint to continue the line across. Each horizontal band of blue paint spanning the painting, then, isn’t completely continuous: you can see places in each band where the stroke starts, stops, and continues. Up close you can see the movement, the labor, the patience in these repeated thin stripes. But I didn’t see the details at first. I remember stopping at least ten feet away and seeing the whole painting. The thin stripes of paint turning thick and thin with starts and stops looked something like thin, soft, slowly undulating corduroy, and the painting shimmered. It both gave off and took in light.

Multiple kinds of space could be seen: there was a deep space, difficult to pin down, fuzzy, wavy and distant; there was an intimate space, enveloping and up close, and the painting felt in its material like a real thing, handmade in small amounts like weaving; and there was the formal space of the boundaries between the painting and the wall, and in the border that separated the edge of the canvas and the inner painted area, slices of architectural space against painted space.

The dark brown canvas and the dark blue paint were basically the two colors in the painting, but they simultaneously projected a brillaint image and also collapsed into a kind of mud that couldn’t be captured and separated by the eye. The painting wavered in and out of sight, not always easy to see, but the process of looking at it was an experience that was constant and steady. Finally, I began to see how so little could do and mean so much. I learned a lot from Falling Blue, and I looked at it at every opportunity. I learned how to look at a painting as a critical observer, and as one who experiences the painting emotionally and intellectually.

It’s much harder to say, however, what I learned about making a painting, because the entire painting is there before me — canvas, pencil lines, strokes of blue paint — and the entire act of its making can apparently be deciphered. Why can’t this be easily repeated? I can look at he painting almost as a recipe, but I can’t make it. I learned something to do with intention (having an idea, following through on it, and staring down the results to decide whether or not to keep it) and contrivance (having a bad idea, illustrating an idea, losing sight of or failing to follow the idea, or just plain bad editing of work). “Falling Blue,” and successive paintings by Agnes Martin I’ve seen, taught me about using materials directly, finding and committing to a vision and voice, avoiding illustration, and the power of distillation. I think these are some of the strengths of her work. Happily, she was able to work for a long time, and I believe her example and body of work is very important to any kind of artist.

[1] http://www.museumca.org/images/1151.jpg
[2] http://www.transit-lounge.com/hassel_smith
[3] See Notes, 13: http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/martin-going/essay.html
[4] http://collections.sfmoma.org/Obj207$6082

 

MARTIN, Agnes
(22 March 1912)

Born in Saskatchewan, she emigrated to the United States in 1932 to attend college in Washington State and New York. In the early 1960s, a few years after relocating from New York to New Mexico, Martin began producing paintings of grids composed of horizontal bricks, so to speak, that run from edge to edge, both vertically and horizontally. Perhaps sensing that she had reached an ultimate image, much as her near-contemporary Ad Rheinhardt had, she stopped painting for several years before returning to grids that were even more subtle in making thin, straight parallel lines that shimmer, and thus evoke a spiritual experience outside of themselves. Not unlike Reinhardt again, Martin is also an assertive writer: “Art work is a representation of our devotion to life. Everyone is devoted to life with an intensity far beyond our comprehension. The slightest hint of devotion to life in art work is received by all with gratitude.” Especially in group exhibitions, in my experience, her work shines through the strength of subtlety.

— Richard Kostelanetz, excerpted with permission from his book A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, New York: Schirmer Books, second edition, 2000