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Abstraction-Creation: Post-War Geometric Abstract Art from Europe and South America, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, United Kingdomposted August 13th, 2010
Geraldo de Barros, Pampulha, Sao Paulo, Brazil, September 8 – October 6, 2010 Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London is delighted to present Abstraction-Creation, an exhibition uniting twenty-nine
abstract artists from South America and Europe.
The title Abstraction-Creation refers to the European abstract art movement of the same name founded by Theo van Doesburg in Paris in 1931. This somewhat loose association of artists increasingly looked towards geometric
abstraction and concrete art. Although many of the artists in this exhibition moved away from Van Doesburg’s notion of geometric abstraction, they all championed a purely non-representational abstract art that was not derived
from observed reality and began with the idea that abstract art is the search for
the absolute and the struggle for pure meaning.
This exhibition brings together works by early European modern masters such as Max Bill, Josef Albers and Victor Vasarely along with later proponents of Concretism in South America including Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and the lesser know figures, Judith Lauand, Lothar Charoux and Geraldo de Barros. This exhibition also displays early works by British Constructivist artists such as Anthony Hill and Kenneth and Mary Martin who further explored geometric abstract art through the use of mathematical theories and the juxtaposition of modular forms.
Although geographically and historically disparate, all of these artists looked to abstraction with renewed fervour in the post-war era and saw it as a mode of expression that made a clean break away from the restraints of subjective representation.
A variety of works, ranging from three dimensional sculptures, to paintings, photography, collage, works on paper and journals will be on display.
Recent years have seen a new widespread interest and appreciation of Latin American art. The inauguration of Latin America’s most prestigious art fair, Pinta, in London for the first time in June 2010 is a reminder of this.
A fully illustrated catalogue will be available.
Op Out of Ohio: Anonima Group, Richard Anuszkiewicz, & Julian Stanczak in the 1960s, D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York, NYposted April 15th, 2010
Julian Stanczak, Untitled #15, 1969 April 15 – July 9, 2010 D. Wigmore announces the exhibition with catalogue, Op Out of Ohio: Anonima Group, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Julian Stanczak in the 1960s. The exhibition will feature over 30 paintings from 1959 to 1970 by Richard Anuszkiewicz (b.1930), Julian Stanczak (b.1928), and the three artists of the Anonima Group: Ernst Benkert (b.1928), Francis Hewitt (1936-1992), and Ed Mieczkowski (b.1929). A highlight will be four paintings from the Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye, curated by William Seitz, which placed optical, kinetic, and concrete art into one perception-based movement which the press dubbed “Op Art.” Each of the artists in the exhibition studied or taught at Ohio institutions. Richard Anuszkiewicz and Julian Stanczak met as undergraduates at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the early 1950s before both studied at Yale University with Josef Albers from 1954-1956. Stanczak returned to the Cleveland Institute in 1964 to teach painting, which he did until 1995. Francis Hewitt and Ernst Benkert met as graduate students at Oberlin College in 1959. After meeting as students at Carnegie Tech in the mid-1950s, Hewitt and Ed Mieczkowski both taught at the Cleveland Institute in the early 1960s. Mieczkowski continued to teach there until 1990. The Anonima Group, all artists interested in the psychology of perception and the European Constructivists, did their first work together at Ernst Benkert’s Springs, Long Island studio the summer of 1960. The group was unique in the United States, but its formation paralleled such European groups as Gruppo N and Gruppo T in Italy; Zero in Germany; and Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visual (GRAV) in France. After several exhibitions in Cleveland, the Anonima Group had its first New York exhibition in 1964. In the winter of 1964-1965 they participated in major exhibitions of perceptual art: Vibrations 11 at Martha Jackson Gallery and Mouvement II at Galerie Denise René in Paris, as well as MoMA’s The Responsive Eye in February 1965. In 1966 the Anonima Group’s project Black/White and Gray 24” Square, with ten paintings by each artist, was exhibited in New York and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Galeria Foksal in Warsaw. Anonima participated in the New Tendencies exhibitions in Zagreb in 1965 and 1969. The Anonima Group set up a loft on West 28th Street in 1966 which functioned as a shared studio for the three artists and an exhibition space for Anonima’s work, as well as for their students. The artists developed a four-year plan to examine the four perceptual cues that create the reading of spatial dimension on a two-dimensional surface: overlap, relative size change, brightness ratio, and light and shade. Over the course of a year for each project, the group painted alongside each other using the same limit while creating independent work. Each project was then exhibited in the Anonima Gallery. D. Wigmore’s exhibition includes six examples from the group’s first project Perceptual Inquiry I: Overlap, exhibited in April 1967. Richard Anuszkiewicz and Julian Stanczak are considered the two students who most embraced Josef Albers’s theories on color interaction. Anuszkiewicz’s work applied the latest findings in color theory and visual perception to measured, geometric compositions of precise linear patterns within gridded or square formats, which often emanate outwards from the center of the canvas. Stanczak applied the same knowledge to nature-inspired compositions of wiggles and juxtapositions of curved and angular forms, which radiate energy and internal illumination. With two different approaches, Anuszkiewicz and Stanczak express the excitement of color and make an event of the act of seeing. The Museum of Modern Art purchased a painting by Anuszkiewicz in 1960 from the artist’s first New York solo exhibition at The Contemporaries. The D. Wigmore exhibition includes one of Anuszkiewicz’s paintings exhibited in MoMA’s Americans 1963 (The Harpist and Nine Muses, 1963), as well as the artist’s All Things Do Live in the Three, 1963 exhibited in The Responsive Eye. Julian Stanczak had his first solo exhibition in New York in the fall of 1964 at Martha Jackson Gallery. The exhibition’s title Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings played on the growing talk of the “optical” style; the exhibition led artist and critic Donald Judd to use the term “Op Art” for the first time in print in his review of the exhibition for Arts Magazine. Stanczak and his teacher Albers preferred the use of “perceptual art” to describe these paintings which engaged the viewer’s eye and mind, but critics preferred Op as a counter to “Pop Art.” The D. Wigmore exhibition will have a major 1970 painting by Stanczak titled Burning Through, #III. Two other examples from this series are in the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Dialogues in South and North American Abstraction: An International Symposium, Newark Museum, Newark, NJposted April 9th, 2010
John Ferren, Paris Abstract, ca. 1935 Presented by the Newark Museum and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Saturday, April 10, 2010, 10am – 5pm The Newark Museum and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros present Dialogues in South and North American Abstraction, an important international symposium that explores the conceptual and aesthetic parallels that linked artists across the Americas during the first half of the twentieth century. The free symposium will be held on Saturday, April 10, 2010 from 10 am to 5 pm in the Billy Johnson Auditorium at the Newark Museum. Pre-registration is required; call 973-596-6550 or e-mail: rsvp@newarkmuseum.org. The panelists, a distinguished group of both emerging and established scholars, will explore a diversity of issues as seen in the work of individual artists. These include John Ferren, Juan Melé, Charles Biederman, Alexander Calder, Carlos Raúl Villanueva, Josef Albers, and Lygia Pape, all of whom are represented in the Newark Museum’s major exhibition Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s–50s. The symposium brings to life the artists’ own call for exchange with each other in order to transcend national and geographical borders. Program: Introduction: “We Beg for Exchange” Identity/Crisis: John Ferren’s Early Transnationalism Abstraction on the Edge: The Structured Frame in Argentina 1944–48 Charles Biederman and the Colors of Light “Sensitive and non-discursive things”: Lygia Pape’s Tecelares Series, 1955–59 Josef Albers: From North Carolina to Mexico and Beyond Villanueva and Calder: The Politics and Poetics of a Dialogue Roundtable Discussion with Presenters For more information, including abstracts of papers, please visit www.newarkmuseum.org. This symposium is held in conjunction with the Newark Museum’s exhibition Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s –50s, which is on view through May 23, 2010. Constructive Spirit, the first exhibition to bring together South American and U.S. geometric abstraction, provides a fresh and innovative look at a dynamic and cosmopolitan period of modernism in the Americas. It includes many never-exhibited works from the Newark Museum’s preeminent collection of U.S. art, along with a variety of loans from public and private collections throughout the hemisphere, including the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas; Malba-Costantini Foundation, Buenos Aires; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Included is work by such renowned artists as Alexander Calder, Joaquín Torres-García, Jesús Rafael Soto, Gyula Kosice, and Arshile Gorky, as well as artists who are less well-known but deserve much greater recognition, including Charmion von Wiegand, Geraldo de Barros, Lidy Prati, and many others. Josef Albers & Ken Price, Brooke Alexander, New York, NYposted April 4th, 2010
Installation view February – June 2010 The works of Josef Albers and Ken Price reveal a similarity of sensibilities and a kind of parallel thinking that stems from a shared interest in Mexico and the American Southwest. Drawing from polar extremes of the cultural spectrum, unexpectedly the two artists arrive at complimentary forms of visual expression. After immigrating to America in 1933, Josef Albers visited Mexico and became interested in Pre-Columbian ceramics and Mayan and Aztec structures; he focused on their underlying geometric forms and repetitive architectural Growing up in Los Angeles, Ken Price was surrounded by popular Mexican culture, particularly curio shop ceramics and clichéd tourist graphics. In The work of Albers and Price connect in different and shifting ways, at times Josef Albers: Formulation : Articulation, 1972, Peter Blum Gallery (Soho), New York, NYposted March 27th, 2010
Installation view of Formulation : Articulation, 1972 March 12 – May 8, 2010 Peter Blum is pleased to announce the exhibition Josef Albers: Formulation : Articulation, 1972, a suite of 127 silkscreen plates. Published by Harry N. Abrams and Ives and Sillman, just 4 years before Albers’ death in 1976, Formulation : Articulation is a collection of 127 silkscreen plates, 121 in color, organized into two portfolios, each containing 33 folders on which one, two, or four silkscreen plates are printed. The portfolio is accompanied by a text with Albers’ notes on each of the plates. Albers refers to these notes as “Statements of Content” in which he discusses the design and color selections and often comments on the work in relation to the plate previous to it. In fact, Albers took great care in selecting the order of the plates to create particular juxtapositions or series of his visual explorations. Over a period of two years of concentrated work, Albers, while in his eighties, created the prints for Formulation : Articulation. The collection is not a retrospective of past works, yet the images represent a gathering of over 4 decades of the artist’s investigation into color, perception, and abstraction. From his iconic Homage to the Square series, to lesser-known images, the prints display the optical possibilities of color and design. Ever the consummate teacher, Formulation : Articulation can be seen as a summation of the artist’s pedagogy. Albers’ writing, work, and teaching profoundly influenced a generation of artists and visual arts instruction the world over. Pictures about Pictures: Discourses in Painting from Albers to Zobernig, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austriaposted March 14th, 2010
Poul Gernes, Zielscheibenbild / Target B, 1966-68 Opening: March 25, 2010 Curated by Renate Wiehager, “Pictures about Pictures. Discourses in Painting” – is the Daimler Art Collection’s exhibition title for the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna. About 130 works ranging from Classical Modernism and the post-war avant-garde via European Zero and Minimalism to international contemporary art are being presented. The exhibition is structured into thematic fields, each of which presents discursive references to historical and current positions: Bauhaus and De Stijl, Hard Edge and New Color School USA, Constructive and Concrete Tendencies, European Zero avant-garde, Minimalism and design aspects, Neo Geo and contemporary positions. The show brings together about 75 artists from roughly twenty countries, and the works cover a time span of one hundred years, from 1908 (Adolf Hölzel) to 2010 (Andreas Schmid). As already suggested by the exhibition title – “Pictures about Pictures. Discourses in Painting” – this show is not showcasing a museum-style sequence of styles and isms. The presentation is in fact attempting to create a referential dialogue between the works and to reveal discursive links between individual formal ideas and subject matter. The intention here is to consider art history not in the sense of ‘invention’ and ‘progression’, but as an argumentative union of pictures in temporary contexts and transitional forms. Dialogue situations of this kind come about in the first place within the horizon of epochs transcribed by time and rendered visible by the exhibition – European avant-garde movements before 1939; re-adoption and reformulation of abstract tendencies in Western art after 1945; analytical deconstructions, remakes and media cross-dressing in the direction of architecture, design and Ambient Art in Contemporary Art. But discursive references can also be discerned over and above the passage of time or developments that diverge culturally and ideologically – Simone Westerwinter and Anselm Reyle make an ironic allusions to the European Zero avant-garde; Jonathan Monk translates Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” into an endless loop; Andreas Reiter Raabe and Olivier Mosset analyse the “end of painting” topos with pictorial forms of emptiness and nothingness; Eva Berendes reconfigures the material aesthetics and formal inventory of Russian Constructivism; Jens Wolf develops rhythmic-serial cover versions of Josef Albers’s “Homage” paintings; Markus Ebner and Tom Sachs ‘repeat’ pictures by their teachers Günter Fruhtrunk and Peter Halley. Participating Artists: Minimalism Germany 1960s, Daimler Contemporary, Haus Huth, Berlin, Germanyposted March 5th, 2010
Charlotte Posenenske, Vierkantrohre Serie D, 1967 March 12 – May 30, 2010 The initial exhibition at Daimler Contemporary in 2010 will show major 1960s trends in German abstract art from the Daimler Art Collection: Constructivism, Zero, Minimal Art, Concept and Seriality. Starting with 1950s predecessors – such as Josef Albers, Norbert Kricke and Siegfried Cremer – the show considers abstract art developments in the cities of Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Krefeld, Stuttgart, Berlin and Munich, but also looks at contiguous Swiss positions. About 60 works by 28 artists are being presented, all developing a specifically German Minimalism in the period from 1954 to 1974 in various media (sculpture, painting, film and drawing). Participating Artists: In the early sixties in Germany, a new kind of Minimalism developed that was initially largely independent from the developments in America at the time. This German Minimalism was in many cases stimulated by, but also in conflict with, Concrete Art and the European Zero avant-garde, which drew attention to it from 1957 on, starting in Düsseldorf, with unusually staged exhibitions and spectacular projects for public space. The steles, cubes, and picture objects produced by the Zero artists, which lay in the space or stood in front of the wall, represent a significant new step for German art in terms of quality around 1959/60. The Düsseldorf Kunstakademie played an important role in the transition to a specifically German Minimalism from 1962 until around 1970. In the sixties, it provided many of its students with a basis for examining minimalized sculpture. Among them, the young Franz Erhard Walther developed his first proto-Minimalist objects starting in 1962, followed in 1964/65 by Imi Knoebel, Imi Giese, and Blinky Palermo. At the same time, Hanne Darboven in Hamburg, Charlotte Posenenske in Offenbach and, outside academic contexts, Peter Roehr in Frankfurt conceived their first attempts at Minimalist works. On the occasion of this pioneering exhibition there will be a three-day symposium on May 15 -17, 2010, held at Daimler Contemporary in Berlin. The publicly accessible symposium is inviting protagonists, important collectors, curators and active gallery owners of the time, academics, art critics and journalists, who will give insights in talks, panel discussions and specific lectures. By engaging experts from the respective genres the symposium aims to draw an encompassing picture of the minimalist movement in the field of music, literature, film and dance in Germany. Anne Appleby & Kuno Gonschior: Capturing Colours, The Mayor Gallery, London, United Kingdomposted February 21st, 2010
Anne Appleby, Little Sweet Pea, 2008 Both followers of artist and colour theorist Josef Albers, the American painter Anne Appleby and German artist Kuno Gonschior have a common aspiration of capturing colours, by means of abstraction and through analytical observation of natural experiences. Anne Appleby (born 1954), former Bay area painter, who works and lives in Montana, is often referred to as a Colour Field artist from her use of large “all over” abstract canvases. After graduating in 1989 with an MFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, she has for 20 years tried to render the subtle variations of tones and light passing through and over the organic subjects she chooses, for nature is her inspiration and concern. The technique she uses by mixing oil and wax on canvas enables her to obtain, layer upon layer, a delicate sensation of translucence and depth observed in nature, from its ephemeral events. Appleby likes to work in large triptychs or associations of panels, which allows the viewer to enter the fields easily. The contemporary art collector Guiseppe Panza, who commissioned her for the Phaeton’s room at the Ducal Palace of Sassuolo (Modena) is one of her admirers: “Her paintings are the landscapes of a nature that is invisible to our eyes but not to our conscience, which goes beyond the visible.” (Memories of a Collector, Abbeville Press, 2007, p.284). After studying at the art academy of Düsseldorf and Cologne from 1957-1963, Kuno Gonschior (born 1935) started to create series of chromatic experiences. These series, based on capturing colours as a pure element, only differ from each other by their nuances. Gonschior’s works are playful and experimental, studying colour in all its variation and without the association of the psyche. The Mayor Gallery is showing a selection from the first two decades of his research as a Concrete artist. Often painted on small un-primed canvases, Gonschior applied small dabs of paint, as particles, bearing similarities with the impressionists and his palette, without limit, explored fluorescent colours to black. Gonschior and Appleby, although two very distinctive artists, aim to touch a wider public, who often reject abstract, but as Gonschior explained at his recent museum exhibition in Germany: “It isn’t about having the right education, you just have to free your mind from these constraints and do the one thing that most people don’t do: concentrate and study the painting for a while, give the painting a chance –for say – 5 minutes. That will have an impact.” (in conversation with W. Smerling, “Just for you and me”, exhibition catalogue, MKM Duisburg, p.28) The Mayor Gallery will also exhibit a number of paintings by Josef Albers to compliment their works. Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s, Newark Museum, Newark, NJposted January 18th, 2010
February 17 – May 23, 2010 The first exhibition to bring together South American and US geometric abstraction, Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s features more than 90 works by 70 artists from Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. Constructive Spirit examines the connections, both conceptual and personal, among abstract artists, suggesting parallels that cut across time, national borders, and a range of media, including paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films. Featured artists include Alexander Calder, Joaquín Torres-García, Jesús Rafael Soto, Gyula Kosice, Lygia Clark, Ellsworth Kelly, Geraldo de Barros and many others. Constructive Spirit includes many never-before-seen works from the Newark Museum’s preeminent collection of US art, as well as major loans from acclaimed private and public collections and galleries across both continents. Complementing the exhibition are related programs and events. On Saturday, April 10 from 10 am to 5 pm the Newark Museum and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros will present an international symposium that will offer new perspectives on South American and US abstract artists including John Ferren, Juan Melé, Charles Biederman, Gego, Josef Albers and Lygia Pape. Other related programs include a lecture series, gallery talks and family events. For information, click here. Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s is accompanied by a major publication of the same name that will be available February 2010 at the Newark Museum Shop. Fully illustrated and co-published by Pomegranate Press, it features seven essays that place North and South American abstraction in dialogue. Authors include Karen A. Bearor, Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Aliza Edelman, Adele Nelson, Mary Kate O’Hare and Cecilia de Torres. The 196-page publication will be available in hardcover for $39.95. Call 973-596-6696 to pre-order your copy today. Albers / Albums, MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NYposted December 12th, 2009
December 12, 2009 - January 30, 2010 MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce a new exhibition of seven album covers designed by Josef Albers (1888-1976) for Command Records between 1959-1961. The exhibition will also include additional Command Records album covers designed by other artists, such as Charles E. Murphy, Barbara Brown Peters, and Gerry Olin, as well as photographic reproductions of materials from The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation’s archives. About Command Records Command Records was founded in 1959 by Enoch Light (1905-1978), a classical violinist, bandleader, and sound recording engineer. Light went to extraordinary technical lengths, and often great expense, to create recordings of the absolute highest quality possible that took full advantage of new technical capabilities of home audio equipment in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Light specifically perfected stereo effects that bounced sounds between the right and left channel speakers, which was called a “ping-pong effect”. On each album sleeve, Light would include lengthy technical descriptions about each song, the musicians, the depth and breadth of the sounds, and how they were recorded. In order to fit his descriptions, he doubled the size of a standard album sleeve and enabled it to fold open like a book, thereby inventing the gatefold-packaging format. The gatefold sleeve became highly popular in following decades. Light’s first Command Records LP, Persuasive Percussion, which featured an Albers cover, was a highly successful popular hit. The album was listed as one of the 25 best-selling albums of the modern era by Joel Whitburn. For further information about Light, please see the Enoch Light web site (www.enochlight.com). Josef Albers’ Designs Albers’ designs for Command Records in 1959-1961 came at a pivotal and highly-productive point in his professional career. In 1958, at age 70, he had just retired from his position as chairman of the Department of Design at Yale University. In the short period between 1959-1961, he completed many, large-scale public commissions, including for the Corning Glass and Time & Life Buildings in New York City; the Manuscript Society Building in New Haven, CT; and St. Patrick’s Church in Oklahoma City, OK. Several years later, in 1963, he published his seminal book Interaction of Color. By 1959, Albers had been working on his Homage to the Square series for nearly a decade. He would continue to work on this series until his death in 1976. His designs for the Command Records, however, were a bit of a stylistic anomaly for him. Although references to music do appear in his work 25 years earlier, in works such as Keyboard (1932) and his Treble Clef series (1932-1935), his designs for Command Records prominently featured new formal elements for the first time, specifically circles and grids of circles. There are only two other instances of Albers using circles in his work: first, in the Christmas/New Year’s greeting cards he designed for his personal use (1952, 1957); and second, the sand-blasted glass door panels he designed for the Todd Theater in Chicago (1957). Albers designed the following seven album covers for Command Records: * Provocative Percussion (Volume 1), 1959 About Josef Albers Interestingly, a short biography about Albers was included on many of the Command Records albums he designed. It read: “JOSEPH ALBERS is one of America’s foremost contemporary painters, was born in Westphalia, Germany in 1888. After studying in Berlin, Essen and Munich he taught at the famous Bauhaus school from 1923-1933. When the Bauhaus was closed by order of the German government in 1933 Mr. Albers came to the United States to head the Art Department at Black Mountain College where he remained until 1950. After leaving Black Mountain, Mr. Albers took over the direction of the Department of Design at Yale University. At the present time, Mr. Albers lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.” For further information about Josef Albers, please see The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation’s web site (www.albersfoundation.org). PRESS SUPPORT MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you! MINUS SPACE
Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NYposted November 4th, 2009
Oskar Schlemmer, Bauhaus Stairway, 1932 November 8, 2009 – January 25, 2010 This survey is MoMA’s first major exhibition since 1938 on the subject of this famous and influential school of avant-garde art. Founded in 1919 and shut down by the Nazis in 1933, the Bauhaus brought together artists, architects, and designers in an extraordinary conversation about the nature of art in the age of technology. Aiming to rethink the very form of modern life, the Bauhaus became the site of a dazzling array of experiments in the visual arts that have profoundly shaped our visual world today. The exhibition gathers over four hundred works that reflect the broad range of the school’s productions, including industrial design, furniture, architecture, graphics, photography, textiles, ceramics, theater design, painting, and sculpture, many of which have never before been exhibited in the United States. It includes not only works by the school’s famous faculty and best-known students—including Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Lilly Reich, Oskar Schlemmer, and Gunta Stölzl—but also a broad range of works by innovative but less well-known students, suggesting the collective nature of ideas. Konkret: The Heinz and Anette Teufel Collection, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germanyposted October 31st, 2009
Zdenek Sykora & Bridget Riley October 3, 2009 – January 10, 2010 Heinz Teufel, the famous gallery owner and collector, died in 2007. He was a great patron of Concrete Art in Germany. From opening his first gallery in 1966 in Koblenz up to his 1998 activities in Berlin he consequently pursued a stringent gallery profile – independent of the fluctuating fashions of the art world. Including works by over 40 internationally renowned artists, the collection of Concrete Art he put together within this period was given to the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. This assortment of art, including 200 paintings, numerous sculptures, and an extensive stock of prints, gives an exemplary pan-European overview of Concrete Art since the Second World War. The inclusion of Eastern European as well as Italian and French manifestations of the abstractionist movement is an outstanding feature of the collection and rarely to be found in museums. Participating Artists: Nathan Hylden: Affinities, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NYposted October 10th, 2009
Nathan Hylden, Untitled, 2009 October 1-31, 2009 Paul Kasmin Gallery presents “Affinities,” a show that juxtaposes new paintings by Nathan Hylden with works by Josef Albers, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. Curated by Meredith Darrow, the show connects Hylden’s geometric forms and repeated gestures with those of his art historical predecessors. Like Albers, Stella and Warhol, Hylden uses a regulated process to create variations within a systematic sequence and to continue Modern Art’s redefinition of pictoral space. Starting with a stack of identically sized aluminum panels, Hylden adds layers of paint and ink to these reflective surfaces, changing the order of operations for each panel. As the series progresses, older panels are used in the creation of newer ones— for example, vertical bands of white paint bridge the borders of separate panels, forming an indexical link between these individual works within the larger series. Another unifying motif presents itself in the screen-printed image of a one-to-one photograph of a blank canvas hanging on a wall. Hylden deliberately chose the loaded notion of a “blank canvas” to evoke long-standing concerns about the relationships between the illusory depth of an image and its physical support. Grounding itself in Albers’s pure geometry, Stella’s insistence on the potential of formal abstraction, and Warhol’s interest in serialized imagery, Hylden extends the conversation to the next generation of artists and viewers. Nathan Hylden was born in 1978 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the Art Center in Pasadena and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main. His works have been shown in several international group exhibitions, as well as solo exhibitions at Richard Telles Fine Art in Los Angeles, Misako & Rosen in Tokyo, Art: Concept in Paris and Johann König in Berlin. Meredith Darrow is an independent curator living and working in New York City. Josef + Anni Albers: Designs for Living, by Nicholas Fox Weber, Martin Filler & Paul Warwick Thompson, Published by Merrell, 2004posted May 14th, 2009
Click to purchase on Amazon This is such a great publication, the only comprehensive book on the furniture, textiles and the other works of two of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century. Features innovative objects that the couple designed for their homes while teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany and following their move to the United States in 1933. Includes specially commissioned photographs of important but little-known works. Illuminating essays celebrate the Alberses’ endless creativity and set their ground-breaking work in the context of international Modernism. Josef Albers: Paintings, Waddington Galleries, London, United Kingdomposted April 23rd, 2009
Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square, 1961 April 1 – May 2, 2009 Waddington Galleries presents an exhibition of paintings by Josef Albers from his Variant and Homage to the Square series, dating from 1947 to 1971. The earliest painting in the exhibition is Variant: “White and Grey with Two Yellows and Two Greens” (1947–1955). Albers started the Variant series in 1947, a year which he spent in Mexico and the paintings resemble the simple geometric facades of adobe houses, with two mirroring windows, that Albers had seen there. Throughout the series, also known as the Adobe paintings, Albers used a similar composition with varying colour combinations, applying paint unmixed, directly from the tube onto white primed hardboard. He divided each work into units so that every colour could be given a quantitative as well as chromatic valuation, often noting the formula on the back of the painting. It was a working practice he would use again in his Homage to the square paintings, which he began in 1950, the same year that he moved to Yale University to organise a teaching course incorporating many of his ideas from the Bauhaus. Colour was central to Albers’ work and teaching and, partly inspired by Goethe’s 1811 Farbenlehre (Study of colour), he had developed the subject into a separate course. In his experimental exercises, using cut-out paper, Albers explored how colour behaves and perpetually changes, its spatial effects, and how the same colour placed on different colour grounds can lose its identity or how different colours can be made to look the same. For the Homage to the Square series he used a format of squares within a square (an idea developed from Johannes Itten’s Basic Course at the Bauhaus, where squares within squares were used for colour exercises). Albers formulated four different compositions based on related proportions, all of which are included in the exhibition; three containing 3 squares and one of 4. Sometimes Albers added mitred corners to the squares, as can be seen in Study for Homage to the Square: “Oracle” 1961, extended the horizontal planes by painting these a different colour, as seen in “Variation on Homage to the Square” 1961, and used descriptive, often lyrical words to describe how the colours performed together and the associations they evoked; in this exhibition, paintings are named “Whist”, “Green Dusk”, “Golden” and “Oracle”. Albers worked continuously on the Homages to the Square paintings for the next twenty-six years, until his death in 1976. Interview with Michael Brennan, by Jacob Gossett, Kollektiv magazine, 2009posted February 20th, 2009
Michael Brennan: Knife Paintings
Jacob Gossett: How long have you been teaching here at Pratt and what brought you to this school?
Michael Brennan: I’ve been teaching here for 10 years—I went here for MFA from ’90 to 92. I was out of Pratt for several years, showing some and doing a lot of writing on art. Linda Francis, who teaches in the graduate program, very generously asked me to substitute for one of her classes. So I came back then, and it was kind of strange, because at first the place was so full of ghosts for me—whenever I walked into someone’s studio I would remember who had had that studio when I was here as a student. A semester or two later Gerry Hayes asked me if I would be interested in teaching undergraduate classes and I told him yes. I was already teaching at Hunter and I was about to do some teaching at Cooper Union. I was interested in collecting as much teaching experience as possible. Pratt always uniquely felt more like home to me—I guess since I had gone here as a student.
JG: Do think that the painting program adequately equips its students to step out into the professional art world?
MB: I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and I think the biggest need for improvement is in helping students after they graduate. I think other schools are more aggressive about maintaining the profile of their program through their graduates. In terms of the facilities and everyday use, there has always been a lack of quality exhibition space—which seems kind of strange for an art and design school. Other than that, compared to other schools I have taught at, I would say the program is generally above average. There are lots of small things that I think would be easy improvements—like having rolls of butcher paper in the painting studios.
JG: How important do think it is to talk to students about the part of being an artist that lies outside the studio such as approaching a gallery?
MB: I try to bring that into my classes. I think some professors avoid it—they feel like they’re protecting their students from that to some degree, and truthfully, maybe they are not as up on it as they should be because it’s constantly changing all the time. I think an artist is always struggling to get a feeling about what is happening at large. The class that I have with you is mostly sophomores, so it’s probably too soon for a lot of that. Most people view graduate school as the proper domain for professional development, but I do think it is our responsibility as professors to give students an idea of what the reality of the situation is (being an artist) and that is probably the most useful thing an older artist can offer a younger artist. They can share their experiences because everyone has to gauge for themselves how much they’re willing to change to negotiate the art world, etc.
JG: What do you think the biggest significances are between student work and “professional work” and what issues do students need to be aware of in order to elevate their work to that next level?
MB: That’s a really good question. I don’t really look for a professional standard as far as undergraduates are concerned. I do with graduate. I think one of the things that students should think about is what the difference might be between so-called “student work” and the work of a “young artist” —I think there is a big difference there. A lot of it has to with cultivating some kind of personal approach or personal vision, and it is never too soon to start thinking about that. I think one of the biggest problems we have here is that somehow students think that just doing the assignments is perhaps enough, and one thing I’ve learned from being out in the real world is students who tend to do well in the program tend to do real well in the real world. There is a shortage of really fine work, and if you can cultivate that, it might not have a mass appeal, but most people are quick to recognize some kind of quality. The difference between a young artist and a person making student work is a certain level of self-awareness about what it is they are creating and also what the larger context of where that work fits in might be.
JG: With this economic crisis in full swing what do think a student who is about to graduate should expect when trying to enter this now fragile art world.
MB: It’s going to be a tricky time because I think Chelsea might be coming towards the end of its natural life cycle. It could be something like what happened when I graduated in ’92, there was a recession, and as many as a third of the existing galleries closed. There is definitely going to be a contraction, but that is not necessarily bad news because usually following that something new emerges. After all the gallery closings in SoHo in the early 90s, before things shifted to Chelsea, a renegade scene popped up that was interesting for a short time. Perhaps something like that will happen this time, something from the bottom up rather than the top down.
JG: …so do you think there will be a big change in how people make and exhibit their work?
MB: Yes I do, and it has already started. There has been a geographical shift to the Lower East Side, where you see fewer galleries getting much more attention than those galleries that are part of the glut in Chelsea. I just think that these active art zones tend to last ten or so years before something new comes along, and I’m also kind of optimistic with what seems to be happening in Brooklyn now.
JG: Do you think New York will stay the center of the art world?
MB: I do, but we are talking about something that is very much an international scene. The local part of it is actually quite small. I think that is lost on a lot of people who are in the midst of it. It’s strange, the economic forecasts are incredibly dire, yet in the past few months I have managed to sell a few paintings. If people don’t trust their money in 401ks, or other more traditional investments, maybe it will be how it was in the inflation ridden 70’s—people will insist on buying something tangible. I don’t think anyone knows if it’s going to be a two-year recession or a ten-year deflationary period. Artists are very resourceful, and the people who are committed to what they are doing will still be around.
JG: You currently have work on view at PS1 in Long Island City and Gallery 210 in Brooklyn; can you tell us about the work you are currently engaged in?
MB: A couple years ago I was doing work that was more of a literal response to the landscape around me in Gowanus, and I did a very specific project for MINUS SPACE that engaged those issues. Since then, I have returned to a darker and more fantastic imagery. I spent most of last year cultivating this new body of work, and I am satisfied with it. I think I am maybe making my mature work now.
JG: This work seems to focus more on the tonal qualities of painting, what led to the removal of color in your painting?
MB: Well, this is a strange thing, and it is funny talking about it with you, because you are so engaged with color. About 7 or 8 years ago, I taught the standard Albers color theory class at Cooper Union—so I really had to immerse myself in color theory. The more I learned about color and the more color theory I read, and I read everything from Goethe to David Batchelor’s Chromophobia, the more I realized I was something of a color atheist. That has caused me problems, because I also teach at Hunter College and a large part of the faculty there makes work that is exclusively about color. Color is the main force in their painting. I did engage color in the first works I did for MINUS SPACE, but soon afterwards my skepticism came to the fore. It is tonality, or value contrast, that I am more interested in—what I can find between .0 and .1. I use a small amount of color to what I hope is the maximum effect. I do not begin with black grounds, but rather Paynes Gray or Sepia—chromatic black grounds—and the whites tend to be tinted. It’s really this range of gray that I am interested in, and I think some of it has to do with my interest in, not just abstract painting, but also photography, film, and of course this digital paradigm we’ve been living under for quite some time now.
JG: How do you think painting can remain relevant in this era where more and more artists are gravitating towards more interactive approaches to making art such as multimedia, instillation, etc?
MB: It’s a real challenge to artists. I believe painting is such a synthetic medium that it can accommodate so many different ideas and images—so I don’t think it is ever going to disappear completely. I do think it’s a challenge when say a flat screen TV takes up the spot on the wall that was previously reserved for painting, or where you have computer games like Halo or WarCraft—I’m not that familiar with them. I don’t play them myself—which are so completely immersive that a painting must look awfully static in comparison. At the same time, I believe in the poetry of painting, and its power to work from individual to individual. I still have faith in that, and in the sensitivity of viewers. While paintings’ role may not be expanding, there’s a certain area that it still has a very firm hold on. Most of that, sadly for me, has to do with color. Most people go to painting for the richness of color. The color you get in paint has a much broader range than inks or anything being reproduced. One thing painting has left, that I think other media doesn’t have, is that it has a significant surface. Now that may not last for too much longer, but it’s something substantial. At this moment there has been a lot of serious talk about Morandi and a complete reevaluation of his role in the 20th century. You couldn’t have work that is any more about core painting issues than Morandi’s work. Anyone with any artistic sensitivity responds to that work. The potential for somebody to do something with still life (it’s not going to be me) is still there. I like the economy of painting. I like that it doesn’t take up that much room or resources—it’s not necessarily part of the noise. Again, I will reaffirm that I believe in the poetic potential of painting, and I think that will be its mainstay.
JG: OK back to your work now. You seem to have a very direct approach to painting can you give us some insight into your process?
MB: You mentioned that I was in a show at 210. I showed there with David Row and also Ross Neher—three very different painters, but each incredibly direct in his approach. Directness is one sign of mature work. In the past, I probably did a disservice to myself as a painter in that I tended to over paint. I went through this difficult phase a year or two ago where I felt everything had to be coated with this auto body enamel, and it had to be applied a certain way with a certain number of coats…When I finally decided that my own process was getting in the way of me expediting my vision, I stripped all that down and just focused on what was essential to my painting, and I think it got better. I tend to be a perfectionist, which is not an uncommon trait in a painter, but one that was working against me. When I gave myself the latitude to make something less than perfect, oddly enough, it allowed me to make something not perfect but somehow better. That’s one of the paradoxes of painting. If anyone is wondering what I am talking about, Manet did two different portraits of Clemenceau, one is finished, and the other remains unfinished. The unfinished one might be a better Manet painting than the finished one. Maybe that’s too grandiose an example, but that has a little of what I am talking about in terms of the directness issue in painting.
JG: In regards to the show at gallery 210 the other artists work in the show were quite large in scale in comparison to your own. I have heard you talk a lot about scale can you tell us what scale means to you in painting?
MB: I think there’s a lot of confusion in the art world about size and scale. Size and scale seemed to be used synonymously. Size is about whether something is big or small and scale is about a proportional relationship. I think scale is much more of an important issue, and is much more of a subtle issue. I have made big paintings in the past, but I was seeing so many big paintings in Chelsea that I was starting to think that I was just looking at area all the time, or things that were inflated. I happen to admire Clyfford Still but there are many Clyfford Still’s where you could lop off a few yards and it wouldn’t be any better or any worse. I was thinking a lot about scale, and what the scale of our time might be. We live in an era where a lot of information is concentrated in small objects, whether it is an I-Phone or a Blackberry. So I was thinking about that—and I don’t want to sound like I am green (I think it is very difficult to be green and also be a painter)—but also in terms of conserving resources. In my own work I was thinking about what would be appropriate for the kind of mark I’m making with the knife, and the tape sizes I prefer to use. Even when I was making very big paintings they always felt like they were contracting anyway. So I started working smaller again, and on stretchers that had a thinner profile, and I found that I got a better object/painting correlation that was maybe analogous to a flat screen TV, or some of these other tricked out tech things that we are all surrounded by. I also thought that most of the images of painting are trafficked through the web, and the first thing you lose is scale unless you’re photographing your painting against a brick wall. I just don’t think big is that important, and Morandi clearly proves that this season. The reality of my situation is that most of the shows I am invited to participate in often have a size restriction. I am not an art star and I often deliver the paintings myself on the subway. It just seemed more right in terms of where I was as a painter and where I think the culture is right now.
JG: In your work you tend to have this atmospheric wax- oil knife work in the top half of the painting and these hard edge striped bars at the bottom. Do you see your work as trying to unify these two types of languages?
MB: Yes, that’s exactly it. People who tend to favor something more organic tend not to like my painting and people who tend to favor a more purely hard edge language—and there many people in New York who do—find my painting lacking too. I think my work is very modernist, but it is postmodern in one aspect in that it’s a hybrid and that I quote from these antipodal conventions. Most of my favorite painters are modernist painters, but there are some postmodern painters that I admire quite a bit, like Jack Goldstein. Even the influence of collage on someone like De Kooning, who is thought of as a high modernist, might be considered postmodern in practice. I see those two approaches not as separate categories, but as things that belong together. In terms of film making, if you are completely austere and geometric you would make films like Robert Bresson, or Yasujiro Ozu, and if your films had a little bit of expressionism in them, but still retained some rigor, they might be more like Carl Dreyer. I am looking for some kind of synthesis like that—something that works together in an aggressively harmonic kind of way.
JG: What kind of carryover is there between being a full-time artist and a part-time professor? How does one affect the other and how do you balance it?
MB: A lot of people who teach complain about it, I personally find it incredibly rewarding. I get to talk with young people about painting, what could be more interesting for someone like me who is a monomaniac about painting? I’ve had other jobs—my first job after Pratt was working on a tugboat. I’ve had real jobs that paid better but I never found that I was using my whole being. Teaching goes hand-in-hand with my studio practice. Not to say that it isn’t ever trying, or exhausting, or challenging, but I get so much back from my students. I like the long aspect of teaching, where I have students as undergrads, and then I write letters for them when they’re applying to Grad school, and then they eventually become colleagues. One of the reasons I left Florida to come to New York is I wanted to be part of a community of artists. To be among artists that didn’t necessarily agree on everything, but were deeply engaged in what they were doing, and that just didn’t exist where I came from. I like painting immensely, and I like talking about painting secondly, and good teaching requires both.
Kollektiv magazine is a bi-annual publications that showcases emerging artists at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Jacob Gossett’s web site. Dan Flavin / Josef Albers, Gering & Lopez Gallery, New York, NYposted May 24th, 2008
May 4 — June 14, 2008 Gering & López Gallery presents an exhibition of work by Dan Flavin and Josef Albers. Pairing two highly influential artists of the 20th Century, the exhibition will allow the viewer to rediscover, evaluate and place into a new context these very diverse materializations of color and line. Though Albers and Flavin used vastly different approaches, both challenged the function of perception and went on to make significant contributions to the history of art. Albers, the Modernist, blurred the line between fine and applied art and employed traditional painting methods to conduct pioneering experiments in color theory and composition. Flavin, the Conceptualist, defied convention by using commercially available fluorescent lights and placing authenticity in the viewer’s mind rather than the artist’s hand. Both utilized architecture and the ability of the human eye to animate their color theories. Sensory Overload: Light, Motion Sound and the Optical in Art Since 1945, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsinposted February 16th, 2008
Erwin Redl, Matrix XV, 2007 January 24, 2008 — October 2009 Sensory Overload tracks the development of Kinetic and Op art, whose optical stimulation and interactivity introduced new dimensions to art. Stanley Landsman’s Walk-In Infinity Chamber (1968), which has not been on view for nearly fifteen years, together with Erwin Redl’s dramatic Matrix XV (2007), a 25 x 50 foot LED installation, punctuate this extraordinary immersive experience. Chronological in its presentation, the installation begins with works by László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers, two Bauhaus instructors whose ideas stimulated the developments of these styles, followed by vibrant early Op art pieces from the 1950s and 1960s by European and American artists such as Victor Vasarely and Richard Anuskiewicz. The development of Albers’ ideas into geometric abstraction during the 1970s is visible in the works of artists such as Al Held and Frank Stella, and the works of Peter Halley and Philip Taaffe and those of the so-called post-hypnotic artists such as Bruce Pearson and James Siena show the continuation of the optical tradition in the 1980s and 1990s. Select images, films, and videos will be projected in two black box theaters. The Complexity of the Simple, L&M Arts, New York, NYposted December 23rd, 2007
Installation view December 1, 2007 — January 31, 2008 L&M Arts presents The Complexity of the Simple, an exhibition of more than twenty important works by twenty artists of international renown. The show demonstrates the broad range open to a systematic abstraction viewed over nearly five decades. Artists represented include such mid-century masters as Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers, and also critical figures of more recent date such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Liza Lou, Anselm Reyle and Tom Friedman. Minimalism and After I: Objects for Imaginative and Real Use, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germanyposted November 11th, 2007
Nic Hess, König Gerrit [King Gerrit], 2007 (detail) September 21, 2007 — January 27, 2008 The Daimler Art Collection presents the exhibition Minimalism and Applied I at Daimler Contemporary, Haus Huth, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. The exhibition explores the relationship that exists between minimalist formal language and applied art. As the subtitle of the exhibition suggests these ‘transfers’ can be useful for imagination, association and play. Our exhibition at the same time represents the beginning of a new thematic focus to be continued in the next future. Approaching the theme from the perspective of the collection’s history, the exhibition aims at encouraging a dialogue between the developments in the areas as an open dialogue. We have abstained from providing a pure comparative presentation of art and design and have opted to place the main focus on artists of our collection who have been active in both areas. These range from names such as Josef Albers and Arakawa/Gins to contemporary position like Andrea Zittel, Heimo Zobernig and Leonor Antunes. The works by these 25 artists are complemented pars pro toto by designs from Renzo Piano, the architect of Potsdamer Platz, as well as by design products from Gerrit Rietveld, Herbert Krenchel, Charles Eames and Konstantin Grcic. As one can derive from these names the aspects of applied art are represented in the fields of architecture, graphic design, logos and branding, as well as furniture design. Participating artists include Josef Albers (D), Ruby Anemic (D), Leonor Antunes (P), Arakawa/Gins (J/USA), Eva Berendes (D), Max Bill (CH), Martin Boyce (GB), Krysten Cunningham (USA), Stéphane Dafflon (F), Karl Duschek (D), Maria Eichhorn (D), Ossi Fink (I), Konstantin Grcic (D), Nic Hess (CH), Donald Judd (USA), Kazuo Katase (J), Imi Knoebel (D), Herbert Krenchel (DK), Sylvan Lionni (USA), Alexander Liberman (USA), Richard Merkle (D), Isamu Noguchi (J), Danica Phelps (USA), Renzo Piano (I), Gerrit Rietveld (NL), Meg Shirayama (GB), Anton Stankowski (D), Franz Erhard Walther (D), Franz West (A), Georg Winter (D), Lars Wolter (D), Andrea Zittel (USA), Heimo Zobernig (A). After Image: Op Art of the 1960s, Jacobson Howard Galleryposted March 23rd, 2007
Alexander Liberman, Omega IX, 1961 March 8 — April 28, 2007 In addition to being the Year of the Pig, it also appears to be the year of Op Art. Another great survey exhibition including Yaacov Agam, Josef Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Hannes Beckmann, Fletcher Benton, Karl Benjamin, Francis Celentano, Tony Conrad, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Benjamin Cunningham, Gene Davis, Jose de Rivera, Julio Le Parc, Leroy Lamis, Alexander Liberman, François Morellet, Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, Bridget Riley, Julian Stanczak, Frank Stella, Luis Tomasello, and Victor Vasarely. Josef Albers / Donald Judd: Form and Color, PaceWildenstein Gallery, New York, NYposted February 20th, 2007
January 26— February 24, 2007 Josef Albers: Poems and Drawings, Yale University Press, 2006posted February 17th, 2007
Purchase on Amazon.com A new edition of an Alber’s classic and long-unavailable publication, featuring 22 line drawings, as well as original poems. The Optical Edge, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, NYposted February 16th, 2007
Gilbert Hsiao, Encounter, 2006
Gabriele Evertz, Motion Parallax, 1998 March 8 — April 14, 2007 Curated by Robert C. Morgan, exhibition includes Bridget Riley, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Julian Stanczak, Victor Vasarely, Josef Albers, Sandford Wurmfeld, Robert Swain, Gabriele Evertz, Rakuko Natio, Gilbert Hsiao, Soon Ja Han, Jon Groom, Beverly Fishman, Ryszard Wasko, and Michelle Hinebrook. Curated by Robert C. Morgan. A catalog will accompany the exhibition. There will also be an artists talk on March 9 at 6pm, Pratt Manhattan, Room 213 with Jan Groom, Soonja Han, Ryszard Wasko, and Sanford Wurmfeld. Interview with Tilman, by Chris Ashleyposted June 1st, 2006
introduction 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. Joseph Marioni at Peter Blum Gallery, by Michael Brennanposted May 1st, 2006
Although he has shown extensively in Europe for many years, it’s only in the past decade, when he began showing with Peter Blum, that his stature in America has grown large in a more public way. This, despite the fact that Marioni exhibited his work at Bykert Gallery in the 70’s, was tapped by Brice Marden for a show at Artists Space, and was included in a recent Whitney Biennial. However, it took the New York art scene a long time to take notice—until it was unavoidable really. As soon as it appeared that the renowned critic Michael Fried had apparently stepped out of retirement (at least from contemporary art) in order to give Marioni the nod, how could the art world no longer take notice? That said, who would expect anyone involved in a trend conscious commercial art scene to get excited about monochrome painting? The works’ beauty was too basic, non-critical even. In truth, the monochrome tag doesn’t even really fit Marioni so well. The term implies a kind of one-dimensionality, whereas his works are polychromatic, having been made from multiple transparent glazes of color. Marioni was once a part of the Radical Painting Group, which included nearly all of today’s leading monochromists. I find the “Radical” title suspect too, however, because it seems to overcompensate for what is an inherently conservative art movement. I have many more issues with the orthodoxy of the Radical Painting than with the art itself. What’s most interesting about much of Marioni’s painting doesn’t always jibe with the official party line anyway. Marioni’s current exhibition inaugurates Blum’s new Chelsea gallery space. Although only five paintings occupy this spacious ground floor gallery, it feels quite full, as the works are both large and commanding, though still humanly scaled. Most of the paintings are about ten by eleven feet, and just off square. The color is complex, with a bias towards green. What often appears black at first glance is often two or more distinct color glazes that produce the effect of black in their overlay. Marioni’s ambition is immediately apparent in these new, larger paintings. They seem much more closely aligned with Abstract Expressionism, and the broader stretch of “American Type” painting in general, than with the late-minimal practice of Radical Painting. In many ways, by broadening the scope of his project, and making a play for greatness, Marioni has now left his fellow monochromists in his wake. With its dark and fulsome surface, Painting, 2006, which is the show’s centerpiece, recalls Clyfford Still’s grandiose untitled, 1952, (Art Institute of Chicago). Marioni has tested the limits of his program with these new paintings, pushing his tools and materials to their absolute limit. Though, as with Still, one often wonders about the necessity of extreme size. Would the paintings be any better or worse plus or minus a few square yards? It’s hard to say. At roughly seven by seven feet, the smallest but still sizable painting in the exhibition, also titled Painting, 2006, is also one of the show’s most radiant. Its off-white and pale yellow combination catches raking light from the North as it filters through the gallery’s frosted glass door to the left. The experience is purposefully Vermeer-like, and the painting’s soft golden glow recalls the plaster wall and drawn drapery in the Dutch master’s intimate Woman Putting on Pearls. To his credit, Marioni manages to achieve more nuance with acrylic paint, than most painters are even capable of realizing with oil. He is one of the very few painters whose acrylic surfaces never feel plasticky. In fact, they often look rich, juicy even, in their carefully manipulated downward flow. Despite the glow, I do, however, have a few issues with Marioni’s work. If these paintings are principally about a color experience, it seems to me that they are fundamentally flawed in that they have highly-reflective, glossy surfaces. How can the viewer become enveloped in the color, or experience the “body-transfer” that the artist himself desires, if one’s own image is constantly reflected within the paint? The paintings operate as colored mirrors most times, blocking one’s gaze. This deleterious effect was slightly diminished in this instance in that the gallery is relying on natural light, so the space is darker, and the light more ambient than one might expect. Secondly, I feel that Marioni’s constant use of a paint-roller runs counter to the emotional effect he now seems interested in putting across. The roller texture itself is generic, impersonal by nature, and most often recalls the skim-coated surfaces of sheetrock walls. I understand the idea of distancing or removing the hand, and the formalist rigor that such a strategy implies—I don’t necessarily want to be taken to the brink of the sublime in the same bombastic manner as with Still—but the reliance on the roller strikes me as a kind of hedge or dodge. It seems like Marioni might be holding back, or playing it safe, hiding his hand behind the roller, at the most crucial moment in his career, especially now that he has many people’s attention. One problem that I have with monochrome painting in general is that all of the action seems to be relegated to the margins. The most interesting activity in the paint is always happening at the edges where the paint tends to unfurl. I understand and acknowledge the critical function of servicing the edge and the role it plays in formal painting. I’ve just grown weary of scanning the sides and bottoms of paintings looking for painterly incident and excitement. Certainly a Pollock painting is as interesting at its core as it is at the edge. Frank Stella once famously remarked that the Abstract-Expressionist always “got into trouble at the corners,” whereas the monochromists are only too happy to stay there and face them. Also, I don’t buy the implication that monochrome painting is somehow the most superior type of color painting. Duochrome and trichrome painting are also modernist and reductive but often more complex in their color interaction—think of Albers, Louis, or Rothko for starters. Color becomes activated in the presence of other colors, so the whole idea of having a single, dominant hue seems wrongheaded somehow. Often the white wall of the gallery is the strongest counterpoint to a monochromatic field, which is why they’re often reproduced as installations in catalogues rather than in isolation. Wouldn’t more internalized counterpoints, besides marginalia, be advantageous to the advancement of color painting? Even atonal music, such as Terry Riley’s infamous composition In C, contains many structural counterpoints. Even Ad Reinhardt, a common influence among the Radical painters engaged composition to some degree. I’m not so much questioning the quality of Marioni’s paintings here, as much as I’m debating the dogma of Radical Painting. Clearly, he understands a great deal about color. He’s devoted most of his life, successfully, to the pursuit. I once saw a medium sized yellow painting of Marioni that had the absolute density of dwarf star. The yellow was advancing so strongly that I felt as if I were being shoved around the room. I also appreciate the fact that his work is unabashedly heroic. Some critics might read this as a historicist strategy, an attempt to regain paintings lost authority, but to me it seems more germane to these grim times than much of whimsical work that is supposedly much more relevant. This is easily one of the most ambitious painting exhibitions of the year. I find Marioni’s painting exemplary, rather than temporary, among contemporary art.
Michael Brennan is a New York painter who writes on art. David Reed: The Painter and Late Style, by Michael Brennanposted November 1st, 2004
David Reed is a grandmaster — no painter has contributed as much in terms of expanding the vocabulary of abstract painting and maintaining its relevance during this era of marginalization, although there are many in New York who currently enjoy greater status. With a rare combination of technical virtuosity, historical ambition, and genuine image innovation Reed’s work is advancing in a world that’s dissolving into total digital delusion. No other post-modern painter has developed an oeuvre this rich in the last 30 year period. Reed’s recent show at Max Protetch picked up where the last one left off, but, surprisingly, there was a detectable fracture within his continuum that perhaps foreshadows some future break. The exhibition included five large abstract paintings along with some corresponding works on paper that revealed the artist’s working process in great detail. All of the qualities one associates with Reed’s paintings are still firmly in place—the scalloped rotary gestures with their shifting velocities, the implied cinematic scale, and his rhapsodic use of color at full bleed. When looking at any of Reed’s horizontal paintings, such as #517 or #477-2, one can almost hear the Niagara heavy voice of some fifties-era narrator theatrically boom “THIS…IS CINERAMA!” Unfortunately, the rapturous spell is broken at times by some of Reed’s more niggling tendencies—his endless retouching, the harsh recutting of contours, or the visual blight of wayward sandpaper grain. In some way these incidental glitches add to the paintings’ mystique of customized handicraft, but more often than not they just interrupt the surface polish and overall flow of the image. There’s much to be said, however, for the stunning mechanics of these paintings. In Reed’s vertical #516 one can enjoy his deft polyphonic fusion of purples and pinks that weave, cleave and hover over a reverberating chord of yellow and orange underpainting. His complex chromaticism becomes compounded as the banded colors drop in temperature from warm to cool, no achromatic blacks or grays were applied this time. Reed is essentially a color glazier who dramatically laminates the split spectrum to both harmonious and dissonant effect. His process results in paintings of unparalleled visual splendor that have often been labeled “decadent” because of their spectacular flourish. These paintings are undeniably, perhaps suspiciously, seductive, but in terms of today’s wider culture Reed is competing for attention in a world that’s been blindsided with such wild technological opiates as The Polar Express in 3-D IMAX. Frank Stella once famously railed against the anemia of modern painting in his Working Space lectures (1983-4), insisting on the necessity of reincorporating Baroque/Caravaggesque type complexities: After Mondrian abstraction stands at peril. It needs to create for itself a new kind of pictorality, one that is just as potent as the pictorality that began to develop in Italy during the sixteenth century. The problem is not the overwhelming ambitiousness of the undertaking, but the difficulty that abstraction has today of relating to the past—for example, in extending its roots beyond Cubism. At long last, hasn’t Reed responded in a manner that Stella’s own scrap metal sculpture can never hope to fulfill? Only within the microcosm of abstract painting itself, where one pole is dominated by the extreme reductiveness of the so-called “Radical” painters and the other is exhausted by the sheer scope of Gerhard Richter’s all encompassing photo-expressionism could Reed be seen as decadent. Reed is really a special case. His work’s overt sensuality reaches towards the engagement of a broader audience. If David Reed hadn’t digitally inserted one of his paintings into Scottie’s (James Stewart) bedroom in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo, if he hadn’t broached that virtual realm, we would then really have to take George Lucas’s claims to being a “true painter” seriously? Critics who earlier may have mistaken Reed’s project as some kind of reinvestment in Roy Lichtenstein’s pop-cartoon brushstrokes, or more bizarrely targeted him for his compulsive chronology, have been proven short-sighted. They failed to grasp the breadth and potential of Reed’s program. How many abstract painters have even tried to engage popular culture at any level? How many painters have successfully addressed the inescapable impact of film and more recent domination of digital media? The necessity of Reed’s contribution should not be underestimated, nor should the excesses of his painterly effect be denigrated. In short, Reed defined and refined a whole new set of possibilities for abstract painting that extend well beyond an endgame strategy. The artist himself once stated “I don’t want to be the first painter and I don’t want to be the last.” #517 is a large, horizontal painting defined by 3 bubbles, or subsets, that each encapsulate a loose, lyrical green line that is at once both dislocated and locked in place. There is a tension here within the gesture that goes beyond the striking red/green color contrast and seems to embody the subversive desire to disrupt the careful synthesis that the artist has so carefully and painstakingly achieved. It’s almost as if that serpentine gesture, in its struggle to set loose, may be the herald of an emerging late style within Reed’s painting itself. In his unpublished essay “Thoughts on Late Style”, the late Edward Said outlined several, mostly intransigent, qualities that often define an artists’ late work. Adorno defined a similarly difficult and contradictory event when analyzing Beethoven’s final string quartets: The power of subjectivity in the late works of art is the irascible gesture with which it takes leave of the works themselves. It breaks their bonds, not in order to express itself, but in order, expressionless, to cast off the appearance of art. Of the works themselves it leaves only fragments behind, and communicates itself, like a cipher, only through the blank spaces from which it has disengaged itself. #517, like some tropical storm upon landfall, is as much falling apart as it is gathering itself together. Reed’s painting is beginning to become more interesting in its discord than it previously was in its harmony. This new dissolution is best witnessed in the polyphonic fusion of #516 where the color is clearly acting out, becoming intransigent—behaving badly. In #516, an array of individual forces are separating from the overall image and fracturing the armature of an artificial synthesis. Within the core of #516, dithyrambic disenchantment and pleasure freely collide. The painting is alarmingly unstable, like the radioactive isotope Uranium-238. There is something new to admire in Reed’s work, and it manifests itself in the emergence of a late style. Or more succinctly, in the words of Josef Albers: By giving up a preference for harmony, we accept dissonance to be as desirable as consonance. With real maturity there often comes a stripping away. Maybe this is something that a discussion of style cannot even truly approach, however, we recognize this quality in the late works of all great artists. In terms of painting one thinks of Titian, Hals or Rembrandt, Cezanne, or pre-feeble DeKooning. The fissure is already there in Reed’s work; will style prevail or the painter himself?
Michael Brennan is a New York painter who writes on art.
1 Stella, Frank. 2001. Caravaggio from the Norton “Working Space” lectures at Harvard University, 1983-4, reprinted in The Writings of Frank Stella. Koln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig. 2 Lucas, George. [nd] Beyond Star Wars: What’s Next for George Lucas. Interview with Kevin Kelly and Paula Parisi. www.darklords.net.lucasin3.htm 3 Foster, Hal. 1980. David Reed, The Clocktower. New York: ArtForum 19, no. 4 (December): p.72-73. 4 Smith, Roberta. 1999. A Luscious Journey, Exhaustively Annotated. New York Times, August 20: p. E35. 5 Reed, David. 1990. Interview with Stephen Ellis for David Reed. Los Angeles: A.R.T. Press. 6 Said, Edward. 2004. Thoughts on Late Style. LRB, Vol. 26 No. 15 dated 5 August 2004. www.edwardsaid.org 7 Adorno, Theodor. 2002. Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. 8 Albers, Josef. 1963. Interaction of Color. New Haven: Yale University Press. Interview with Harmut Böhm, by Matthew Delegetposted February 1st, 2004
The following interview was published on MINUS SPACE in February 2004 in conjunction with Hartmut Böhm’s spotlight exhibition.
Matthew Deleget: I would like to begin our interview – your first published in English – with a brief discussion of the art climate in Germany directly following World War II. You were born in Kassel, Germany, in 1938, and came of age during the war and post-war period. The war clearly caused a massive disruption with prior concrete art movements developed by the Bauhaus in Germany, De Stijl in the Netherlands, and Constructivism in Russia. Where and how did concrete art and artists regroup and reemerge during the late 1940s and 1950s in Germany? Hartmut Böhm: The first years after the war were struck with shortages, the strains of daily life, and the reconstruction of destroyed structures. Documenta I in Kassel in 1955 was certainly the reentry into the international art dialogue; it took place in the makeshift Fridericianum, which was badly damaged in the war. The Art Academy (Kunstakademie) in Kassel was newly re-founded in 1948 with a partial adoption of the teaching methods of the Bauhaus, which were expressed in the new term “work academy.“ The High School for Form (Hochschule für Gestaltung), founded in Ulm in 1953, oriented itself even more clearly after the Bauhaus. It had the requirement of comprehensive, intellectual discussion with the outside world; the initiators were Otl Aicher and Inge Scholl, in memory of their siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were executed by the Nazis. Max Bill became their first principal and planned the school building. Anton Stankowski returned back to Stuttgart from Switzerland and resumed his work in art and graphic design, which he began in Stuttgart in the 1930s. Max Hermann Mahlmann returned from the war and found his constructive pictorial language in Hamburg in the 1950s. Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, who lived during the war in Holland, went to the High School for Form (Hochschule für Gestaltung) in Ulm. Josef Albers stayed in the United States, but came to Ulm as a guest lecturer between 1953 and 1955. Otto Ritschl worked in Wiesbaden. The younger generation first formed at the end of the 1950s in Rheinland. Düsseldorf and Cologne became important places for art. I am thinking about Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günter Uecker, and the broader circle of European “Zero” artists. The actual concrete artists, however, lived, worked, and taught at various places and remained widely isolated, until little by little newly-founded galleries came into being – for instance, Galerie “Der Spiegel“ in Cologne; Galerie Teufel in Koblenz (later Cologne); Galerie Hoffmann in Frankfurt (later Friedberg); and others. MD: Two of the artists you cite as major influences in your artistic development are Max Bill (Swiss, 1908-1994) and Richard Paul Lohse (Swiss, 1902-1988). In the United States, there is very little information about these seminal artists in the form of exhibitions, monographs, essays, dialogue, etc. Please discuss the legacy of these two artists on concrete art in Germany and, more specifically, their impact on the development of your work and thinking. HB: The “Zurich Concretes“ had the privilege of continuing to develop the constructivist tradition of the pioneering generation in neutral Switzerland. Max Bill grew up as a student of the Bauhaus. He impressed and influenced me with his far-reaching theoretical and curatorial work, as well as his wonderful graphic, painterly, and sculptural work. Still today, I know how directly his “Skulptur 22“ overwhelmed me at the 1959 Documenta. His writing, “The Mathematical Way of Thinking in Art” (Die mathematische Denkweise in der Kunst) from 1949 gave concrete art a theoretical foundation. During the war (1944), he showed the first exhibition on the theme in the Kunsthalle Basel under the title “Concrete Art.“ In 1960 he put together a second concrete art exhibition that also included North and South American positions (Alexander Liberman, Ad Reinhard, Ellsworth Kelly, Leon Polk Smith, Mary Vieira, Luiz Saciloto, Hermelindo Fiaminghi and others). Richard Paul Lohse influenced me with the rigid consequences of his modular and serial orders, which he developed beginning in the early 1940s. I have visited him multiple times in Zurich since the 1960s and he has become something of a “fatherly friend.“ He has been interested and engaged in the work of younger artists his entire life; he has intensely followed my work and analyzed it with rigorous exactitude. I am especially thankful to him for insight into the conclusive consequences that hold a work together structurally. It is difficult to comprehend, why so little attention has been given to these two influential artists in the United States. Max Bill had a large exhibition at least in 1974 at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, which was shown afterwards at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art. To my knowledge, Lohse was introduced by Donald Judd at 101 Spring Street in 1988 and with a few paintings in a solo exhibition in Marfa. MD: You were a student of Arnold Bode, artist and founder of Documenta (started in 1955), at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Kassel, Germany, from 1958-1962. You made your first geometric relief sculptures as a student during this time period. What impact did Bode’s teaching have on your artistic development? What influence did the early Documenta exhibitions have on you? HB: Arnold Bode was a charismatic man, inspired teacher, and brilliant exhibition designer. He himself painted abstract expressionist, but in his classes, very different positions gathered. I was the only one who worked systematically constructive, but I was in close contact with similar loners, from Fritz Winter’s class Kunibert Fritz and Horst Schwitzki; from the sculpture class Werner Krieglstein and Klaus Müller-Domnick; and, not to be forgotten, from the graphics class with Helmut Schmidt-Rhen, Heinz Nickel who lectured on printmaking at the time. As my teacher, Bode had therefore no direct influence on the development of my work, but his generosity gave me the room to find my own way. I made my first systematic white reliefs and began to work in series. The theme of “progression“ became decisive. Documenta II in 1959 was the deciding event of the year; we were literally in Friderizianum and Orangerie daily, where we helped with construction. One couldn’t see the art any closer. I remember how Bode instructed us to carry paintings by Franz Kline or Mark Rothko to specific walls. After the opening we worked on security and daily tours (by the way, all of Bode’s people were ordered to wear gray pants and white shirts – he hated the uniforms of the usual security personnel). MD: In 1964, you participated in the landmark exhibition “Nouvelle Tendance” at the Musee de Arts Decoratifs in Paris, which signaled the emergence of Op and Kinetic Art. The exhibition also included artists such as Bridget Riley and Carlos Cruz-Diez, among others. What was your relationship to the “Nouvelle Tendance” movement? Did you welcome the labels “optical” and “kinetic” for your work? HB: In 1961 I wrote my student thesis “About Constructivism“ (Über den Konstruktvismus), in which I analyzed the historical line from Malevich, Van Doesburg, Moholy-Nagy, and Bill through Gerstner via their manifestos and paintings. Karl Gerstner introduced the most avanced form of concrete art for me at that time through his variable picture-systems. I visited him in Basel and showed him a graphic series, which originated from a photographic overlaying of identical positive and negative patterns. He, in turn, showed them to Matko Mestrovic from Zagreb, who was the inspiration and theoretical head of the 1961 “Nove Tendencije“ exhibition there. I owe my participation in the important “Nouvelle Tendance“ exhibition to the interest and esteem of Karl Gerstner and Matko Mestrovic. Gerhard von Graevenitz was active as a type of artistic commissioner for the German participation in the large Paris exhibition. He visited me and searched out the 12-part graphic series, which I just spoke about. For me, similar to Lily Greenham, Andres Christen, or Francois Morellet and a systematization of the work process, it was about investigation, comprehension, and perception as active learning. It wasn’t about optical sensations, which it was in the foreground for other artists of the “Nouvelle Tendance“ (even for Cruz Diez or Bridget Riley) and how it was a dominant theme in the Op Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965. I didn’t see my kinetic objects of the 1960s as dogmatically kinetic, but rather nearly parallel to what I began in 1966 with my group of “Square Relief“ (Quadratreliefs) works. On the basis of systematic, structured fields, they changed visually through alternation of the viewer’s standpoint and direction of the lighting, thereby making a theme of the relativity of perception. MD: Minimalism emerged as a leading tendency in the United States during this same time. Many traveling exhibitions of Minimalism toured throughout Europe during the late 1960s. What was your perception of American Minimalism? How did it differ from the art being made in Germany at that time? HB: I can’t remember exactly when and where I saw a Minimal Art exhibition for the first time, but we were well informed in Germany about its theoretical basis and aesthetic arrival through the art periodicals of the late 1960s and early 1970s. When I think about it, it was inconceivable to me, the force, intensity, and publicity with which this (last?) pure American movement, in my opinion, came about. The various parameters of Minimal Art, such as the grid, addition, seriality, progression, principal comprehension, neutral technical implementation, and use of industrial materials, had existed beforehand. New and excited for me were the radicality, the dimensions, the spatial reference, and the theoretical founding. In Documenta 4 in 1968, I saw and admired, among the American artists, the spatial-grasping sculptures of Robert Morris, Kenneth Noland’s large oblong formats with horizontal crossbands, the works of Jo Baer, as well as the absolute reductions of Ellsworth Kelly, the huge formats of Al Held, and systems of Sol Lewitt, which have stayed in my memory. Among the European artists, the still, small formats of Antonio Calderara; the formal, reduced reliefs of Jan Schoonhoven and Ad Dekkers; and the paintings of Günter Fruhtrunk had great meaning. MD: In 1974, you made your first “Progressions toward Infinity” works, a concept which you continue to expand upon today. How did you arrive at this series? HB: With the exception of the kinetic objects of the 1960s, I have been occupied exclusively with the theme of progression: understanding progression as regular, at the same time as a running movement from element to element, and respectively as opposing positions of beginning elements. They were therefore formal closed systems in their basic existance (that then became relative through lighting and standpoint). I looked for a possibility of finding a progression with the same methodical rigor, in which the last step of the progression lies outside the visible and only is existant in the imagination: a progression from the visible to the conceivable. I found the solution in the simple geometric axiom that parallels end in infinity. Expressed reversely, they don’t end in the finite. The visible parameters of the progression correspond therefore very rationally with the only thinkable last step of the progression, the infinite dimension. MD: Artists have long been interested in the idea of the infinite, the unknowable, the sublime. I am specifically thinking here about Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings of individuals looking at the vastness of the sea, or Piet Mondrian’s “Pier and Ocean” series, in which he reduces all elements of nature into plus and minus shapes (+, -). What does the idea of “infinity” mean to you? And how do you reconcile it within the finite, physical materials you use, such as steel? HB: My titles reference my concept of the infinite, for example “Progression toward Infinity with 30°“ (Progression gegen Unendlich mit 30°) or “Progression toward Infinity with 75°, 60°, 45°, 30°, 15°“ (Progression gegen Unendlich mit 75°, 60°, 45°, 30°, 15°). They describe the regular advances toward the infinite as a geometric occurence, though also as something that separates the visible from the invisible. I know about the high philosophical, metaphysical concept of the infinite from artists in the Christian Middle Ages, Caspar David Friedrich, Kasimir Malevich, through Barnett Newman or Roman Opalka. I would like the concept of infinity in my work to be removed from utopia. The fascination for me lies in the simultaneous logical combining of the visible and invisible elements and their derived principal separation from that same logic. Manfred Schneckenburger hit upon the fact, in a sloppy catalogue text formulation, in which he determined that my “Progressions toward Infinity“ are not “metaphysical codes,“ but rather “pictorial strategies.“ MD: In the catalogue of your 1990 retrospective at the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany, you consciously chose to organize the more than 130 images of your work according to four reoccurring qualities in your work, rather than chronologically. The qualities are System (serial structures); Perception (transparency and visual ambiguity); Gestalt (partition and outline); and Concept (linear principle and progression toward the infinite). Do you still find these four qualities present in your work? Have any new qualities emerged since 1990? HB: The four qualities you cite from my Ludwigshafen catalog that structure the catalog into four corresponding sections have remained, in effect, the cornerstones of my work. However, they also indicate the extension of my interests over time: system as a basis for the first phase of work, perception as a core concept of the 1960s and early 1970s, form as the main characterisitc of the chipboard works from the 1980s, and concept as the main idea of the “Progressions toward Infininity“ (Progressionen gegen Unendlich) and the “Comparisons“ (Gegenüberstellungen) of steel profiles from the 1990s until today (there are naturally also fore- and background concepts). A new quality has arrived. Since around 1990 (although I realized it earlier in a few works, for example, my 1984-85 installation at Schloss Buchberg), I am looking to take apart a given space. That doesn’t mean for me to derive a work from a room’s spatial condition, but rather, to bring a previously worked out project into agreement, so to speak, and check it in another opportunity and in another situation. An example is my “Floor Work for Odense“ (Bodenarbeit für Odense), which was made for a classical museum (I knew the measurements of the room), after which I exhibited it in an industrial hall in Oberhausen and then in the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund, a former administration building. Each time, it yielded “superimpositions“ of the same work (specifically the material structural elements, the I-beams) on top of various floor surfaces (color and material of the floor) and, naturally, in entirely different spatial environments. Or, I proceed to take with me a specific number of same-sized I-beams to an exhibition, in order to decide there, which sculpture I will realize out of an arsenal of previously established possibilities in accordance with the situation. MD: Over the past 40 years, you have produced work in a broad variety of media, including sculpture, reliefs, installations, paintings, drawings, wall drawings, lithographs, etc. How do you begin a new work? Do you start by experimenting with the materials, or do you begin with an idea and then find the most appropriate materials to express it? HB: Ideally I always begin with a concept sketch, at most they are linear structural correlations. Is the first sketch made and “approved“ by me? I investigate the qualities of serial forms. For example, can I express that, what I express with 4 lines, also express with 5, 6, 7…or 3, 2, 1 lines? What happens when I alter specific parameters? Etc. In principle it is the same occurence, whether I work on paper, with chipboard or with steel profiles. The expressive power of the respective materials naturallyinterests me. At a specific point in time, plexiglas became too elegant for me (it became too dominant in the consumer world) and I searched for a rarer material that was unused aesthetically. I found chipboard, which, in the world of goods, lead a hidden existance as the back wall of closets or covered by veneer. I didn’t stick on any more elements, but rather sawed out the lines with a circular saw. Eventually I discovered the use for industrial, internationally standardized steel profiles, which made it possible for me to get around the given empty space of a wall or floor as a component of the work. MD: In most of your work, the visible objects – such as steel beams, pieces of Plexiglas, colored pencil lines – are as important as the empty spaces you leave between them. When I look at your work, I often find myself connecting lines, shapes, and forms in my mind. Discuss for a minute your use of emptiness in your work. HB: I called my 1990 exhibition at the Museum für Konkrete Kunst in Ingolstadt “the room around the lines“ (Der Raum um die Linie). In action, the inner- and outerspaces are just as important as the structural elements. Dieter Bogner called it “intervals“ in an analogy to the twelve-tone music of Josef Matthias Hauer. Naturally the eye of the viewer should look for and find connections and references over the empty locations – not only comprehend my principals of construction, but rather move freely in the work. MD: There is a current perception among concrete artists in the United States that concrete art as a whole is better understood and valued culturally in Europe than here. Do you agree with this perception? HB: Yes. MD: Lastly, you have been making concrete art for more than 45 years. I often read, however, that concrete art has reached a dead-end. What are your thoughts about this perception? Is concrete art still valid in 2004? HB: I don’t believe that what we, for a lack of a new comprehensive concept call “concrete art,” is at an end. I believe much more that the concept, as Van Doesburg had formulated and Max Bill had presented it, has in between become obsolete. The historical lines of concrete art and minimal art fused together long ago. American and European lines of development are for both American and European artists available and still yield new room to move. There are artists, and there will be further artists, that will systematically investigate, exactly and consciously work on a lucid art that reveals its methods. The MINUS SPACE artists are the best example of that. However, would they describe themselves as “concrete artists?” I considered and assessed MINUS SPACE’s terms “reductive + concept-based” as a working concept, which are modest on the one hand, but, on the other hand, are inclusive of artists of very different strategies and media, thereby opening up a new discourse. The preceding interview was translated from the German by Matthew Deleget. Hartmut Böhm’s original responses are published below.
——————————————————————————————————- 1. Sicherlich war die documenta 1 in Kassel 1955 der Anschluß an die internationale Kunstdiskussion; sie fand im notdürftig hergerichteten, im Krieg stark beschädigten Fridericianum statt. Die Kunstakademie in Kassel war 1948 wieder neu gegründet wordenmit teilweiser. Übernahme von Lehrmethoden des Bauhaus, das drückte sich auch in der neuen Bezeichnung „Werkakademie“ aus. Noch deutlicher am Bauhaus orientierte sich die 1953 gegründete „Hochschule für Gestaltung“ in Ulm. Sie hatte den Anspruch umfassender intellektueller Auseinandersetzung mit der Umwelt; Initiatoren waren Otl Aicher und Inge Scholl im Gedenken an ihre von den Nazis hingerichteten Geschwister Hans und Sophie Scholl. Max Bill wurde ihr erster Rektor und plante das Schulgebäude. Anton Stankowski kehrte aus der Schweiz zurück nach Stuttgart und setzte sein in den 30er Jahren begonnenes Werk in Kunst und Graphikdesign in Stuttgart fort. Max- Hermann Mahlmann kam aus dem Krieg und fand in den 50er Jahren zu seiner konstruktiven Bildsprache in Hamburg, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, der während des Krieges in Holland lebte, ging als Lehrer an die Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, Josef Albers blieb in den USA, kam aber zwischen 1953 und 1955 als Gastdozert nach Ulm, Otto Ritschl arbeitete in Wiesbaden. Die jüngere Generation formierte sich erst Ende der 50er Jahre im Rheinland, Düsseldorf und Köln werden zu den wichtigen Kunstplätzen, ich denke an Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, Günter Uecker und den weiteren Kreis der europäischen „Zero“-Künstler. Die eigentlichen konkreten Künstler aber lebten, arbeiteten und lehrten an verschiedenen Orten und blieben weitgehend isoliert, bis nach und nach durch Galeriegründungen Fokusierungen entstanden, etwa durch die Galerie „Der Spiegel“, Köln, die Galerie Teufel, Koblenz, später Köln, die Galerie Hoffmann, Frankfurt, später Friedberg und andere. 2. Seine Schrift von 1949 „Die mathematische Denkweise in der Kunst“ gab der konkreten Kunst ein theoretisches Fundament. Noch im Krieg (1944) zeigte er in der Kunsthalle Basel unter dem Titel „Konkrete Kunst“ die erste Ausstellung zum Thema; 1960 stellte er im Helmhaus Zürich eine zweite Ausstellung „konkrete kunst“ zusammen, die auch nordamerikanische und südamerikanische Positionen mit einbezog (Alexander Liberman, Ad Reinhard, Ellsworth Kelly, Leon Polk Smith, Mary Vieira, Luiz Saciloto, Hermelindo Fiaminghi und andere. Richard Paul Lohse beeindruckte mich in der rigiden Konsequenz, mit der er seit den frühen 40er Jahren seine modularen und seriellen Ordnungen entwickelte. Ich habe ihn seit den 60er Jahren mehrfach in Zürich besucht und er ist so etwas wie ein „väterlicher Freund“ geworden. Er hat sich zeitlebens für die Arbeit der jüngeren Künstler interessiert und engagiert; meine Arbeit hat er intensiv verfolgt und mit strenger Genauigkeit analysiert. Ihm verdanke ich insbesondere die Einsicht in die schlüssige Konsequenz, die ein Werk strukturell zusammenhält. Es ist schwer nachzuvollziehen, warum diese beiden einflußreichen Künstler in den USA so wenig beachtet wurden, Max Bill hatte immerhin 1974 eine große Ausstellung in der Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, die danach im LACMA und im San Francisco Museum of Art gezeigt wurde. Lohse wurde meines Wissens erst 1988 von Don Judd in 101 Spring Street und in Marfa mit einigen Bildern in einer Einzelausstellung vorgestellt. 3. Ich machte meine ersten systematischen weißen Reliefs, begann in Serien zu arbeiten, das Thema „Progression“ wurde bestimmend. Die documenta 2 1959 war für uns Bode-Schüler das bestimmende Ereignis des Jahres; wir waren buchstäblich täglich im Friderizianum bzw. in der Orangerie, wo wir beim Aufbau halfen, näher konnte man an Kunst nicht sein. Ich erinnere mich, wie Bode uns dirigierte, Bilder von Franz Kline oder Mark Rothko zu den von ihm bestimmten Wänden zu tragen. Nach der Eröffnung waren wir als Aufsicht und für Führungen tätig (übrigens alle in von Bode verordneten grauen Hosen und weißen Hemden – er haßte die Uniformen des üblichen Aufsichtspersonals). 4. Dem Interesse und der Wertschätzung von Karl Gerstner und Matko Mestrovic verdanke ich meine Teilnahme an wichtigen „Nouvelle Tendance“Ausstellungen. Gerhard von Graevenitz war als eine Art künstlerischer Kommisar für die deutschen Beteiligten an der großen Pariser Ausstellung tätig, er besuchte mich und suchte die 12-teilige graphische Serie aus, von der ich gerade sprach. Mir ging es, ähnlich wie bei Lily Greenham, Andreas Christen oder Francois Morellet um die Systematisierung des Werkprozesses, um Recherche, um Nachvollziehbarkeit, um Wahrnehmung als aktive Aneignung; mir ging es nicht um optische Sensationen, wie sie bei einigen anderen Künstlern der NT im Vordergrund standen (wie eben Cruz Diez oder Bridget Riley) und wie sie 1965 in der Op Art Austellung im MOMA zum beherrschenden Thema wurden. Mit meinen kinetischen Objekten der 60er Jahre habe ich mich auch nicht als dogmatischen Kinetiker gesehen, sondern nahezu parallel dazu ab 1966 mit der Werkgruppe meiner „Quadratreliefs“ begonnen, die sich auf der Grundlage systematischer Strukturfelder durch den Wechsel des Betrachterstandorts und der Lichtrichtung visuell veränderten und damit die Relativität der Wahrnehmung thematisierten. 5. Unbegreiflich war mir, mit welcher Wucht, Intensität und Publizität diese (letzte?) rein amerikanische Bewegung absolute Meinungshohheit erhielt, wenn ich daran denke, daß verschiedene Parameter der Minimal Art wie Raster, Addition, Serialität, Progression, prinzipielle Nachvollziehbarkeit, neutrale technische Ausführung, Verwendung von Industriematerialien durchaus vorher vorhanden waren. Neu und aufregend war für mich die Radikalität, die Dimensionen, der Raumbezug, die theoretische Fundierung. Gesehen und bewundert habe ich 1968 auf der documenta 4 bei den amerikanischen Künstlern die raumgreifenden Skulpturen von Robert Morris, Kenneth Nolands große Querformate mit horizontalen Querbändern, die Arbeiten von Jo Baer, ebenfalls im Gedächtnis geblieben sind die absoluten Reduktionen von Ellsworth Kelly, die riesigen Formate von Al Held, die Systematik Sol Lewitts. Bei den europäischen Künstlern hatten für mich die stillen, kleinen Formate von Antonio Calderara, die formal reduzierten Reliefs von Jan Schoonhoven und Ad Dekkers und die Bilder Günter Fruhtrunks große Bedeutung. 6. Ich suchte nach einer Möglichkeit, bei gleicher methodischer Stringenz eine Progression zu finden, bei der der letzte Progressionsschritt außerhalb des Sichtbaren liegt und nur in der Vorstellung existent ist: eine Progression vom Sichtbaren ins Denkbare. Ich fand die Lösung in dem einfachen geometrischen Axiom, daß sich Parallelen im Unendlichen schneiden, umgekehrt ausgedrückt, daß sie sich nicht im Endlichen schneiden, es korrespondieren also ganz rational die sichtbaren Parameter der Progression mit der nur denkbaren letzten Stufe der Progression, der Dimension Unendlich. 7. Sie bezeichnen das regelmäßige Vorrücken gegen Unendlich als einen geometrischen Vorgang, allerdings auch einen, der das Sichtbare vom Unsichtbaren trennt. Ich weiß um den hoch philosophischen, metaphysischen Begriff des Unendlichen der Künstler im christlichen Mittelalter, bei Caspar David Friedrich, bei Kasimir Malewitsch bis Barnett Newman oder Roman Opalka. Ich möchte den Begriff des Unendlichen in meiner Arbeit aus der Utopie herauslösen, die Faszination für mich liegt in der gleichzeitigen logischen Verknüpfung der sichtbaren und nicht sichtbaren Elemente und ihrer aus der gleichen Logik stammenden prinzipiellen Trennung. Manfred Schneckenburger trifft in einer saloppen Formulierung in einem Katalogtext den Sachverhalt, indem er feststellt, daß meine Progessionen gegen Unendlich keine „metaphysischen Codes“ sondern „bildnerische Strategien“ sind. 8. Seit etwa 1990 (wenn auch schon in einigen Arbeiten früher realisiert, z.B. meine Installation in Schloß Buchberg 1984/85) suche ich die Auseinandersetzung mit dem gegebenen Raum. Das heißt für mich nicht, eine Arbeit aus einer räumlichen Gegebenheit abzuleiten, sondern ein vorher erarbeitetes Projekt sozusagen in Übereinstimmung mit der Gegebenheit zu bringen und sie dann bei anderer Gelegenheit in einer anderen Situation zu überprüfen. Ein Beispiel ist meine „Bodenarbeit für Odense“, die für ein klassizistisches Museum gemacht wurde (ich kannte die Maße des Raums), danach stellte ich sie in einer Industriehalle in Oberhausen aus und danach im Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund, einem ehemaligen Verwaltungsgebäude. Es ergeben sich also „Überblendungen“ der jeweils gleichen Arbeit (genauer: ihrer materiellen Strukturelemente, der I-beams) mit der jeweils anderen Untergrundfläche (Farbe und Material des Bodens) und natürlich eine jeweils andere räumliche Gesamt–Atmosphäre. Oder ich gehe so vor, daß ich eine bestimmte Anzahl gleich großer I-beams zu einer Ausstellung mitnehme, um dort zu entscheiden, welche Skulptur ich aus dem Arsenal der vorher festgelegten Möglichkeiten ich im Einklang mit der Situation realisiere. 9. Es ist im Prinzip der gleiche Vorgang, ob ich auf Papier, mit Spanplatten oder mit Stahlprofilen arbeite. Natürlich interessiert mich die Ausdruckkraft des jeweiligen Materials. Plexiglas wurde mir ab einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt zu elegant (es wurde zu dominant in der Konsumwelt) und ich suchte nach einem raueren Material, das ästhetisch unverbraucht war und fand die Spanplatte,die in der Warenwelt ein eher verstecktes Dasein als Rückwände von Schränken bzw. bedeckt von Furnieren führte. Ich klebte keine Elemente mehr auf, sondern sägte die Linien mit der Kreissäge aus, schließlich entdeckte ich für mich die Verwendung von industriellen, international standardisierten Stahlprofilen, die es mir ermöglichten, mit dem gegebenen Leerraum der Wand oder des Bodens als Bestandteil der Arbeit umzugehen. 10. „Der Raum um die Linie“ genannt. In der Tat ist der Binnen-und Außenraum gnauso wichtig wie die strukturierenden Elemente. Dieter Bogner hat das in Analogie zur Zwölftonmusik von Josef Matthias Hauer „Intervalle“ genannt. Natürlich soll das Auge des Betrachters über die Leerstellen hinweg Verbindungen, Bezüge suchen und finden- auch solche, die nicht nur mein Konstruktionsprinzip nachvollziehen, sondern sich frei in der Arbeit bewegen. 11. 12. Längst sind die historischen Linien von Konkreter Kunst und Minimal Art zusammengewachsen, amerikanische und europäische Entwicklungslinien sind sowohl für amerikanische wie europäische Künstler verfügbar und ergeben neue Spielräume. Es gibt Künstler und es wird weiterhin Künstler geben, die systematisch recherchierend, genau und bewußt an einer klaren Kunst arbeiten, die ihre Mittel offenlegt. Die Minus Space Künstler sind das beste Beispiel dafür – aber würden sie sich deshalb als konkrete Künstler bezeichnen? Ich betrachte und schätze den Terminus von Minus Space „reductive + concept based art“ als einen Arbeitsbegriff, der einerseits bescheidener ist, andererseits aber Künstler ganz unterschiedlicher Strategien und Medien einschließt und damit einen neuen Diskurs eröffnet. |
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