Pictorial Space – English

PICTORIAL SPACE

Contemporary technologies are at present introducing fundamental changes to the ways we have traditionally perceived our surroundings and our possibilities for representing them.

Recent developments such as the globalized market, the speed and the scope of media expansion, cause people to perceive their surroundings in a new set of ways, relativize the borderlines of these and alter the mental scale of their dimensions. All of this causes fundamental changes to how space is represented.

It is possible to talk of new “spatial representations” that have become a part of everyday life: menu-functions on the computer screen, program-selecting functions on the television screen, navigation-maps in cars etc. These all introduce new formulas for interlinking different sets of discourse rooted in the principle of making it easily accessible to visual perception. These representations are based on juxtaposed images and texts that interact linking simultaneously existing sets of discourse within a non-hierarchical framework; they synthesize the information to the maximum extent and facilitate a speedier and more selective way of reading.

At present a new set of ways of organizing and perceiving space is irreversibly imposing itself.

In the twentieth century the cubist adventure left the linear perspective obsolete and opened the way for a series of artistic experiments which were to lead — little by little, but definitely — to the formal (and analytical) deconstruction of pictorial space. At present the new digital techniques make possible the construction of sets of dynamic space, with the images themselves, as well as their relation to this space, changing uninterruptedly within an unpredictable succession of ever-new configurations.

Dynamic, discontinuous, not predetermined: contemporary pictorial space is constructed on the basis of fractured shapes and flexible structures within a non-linear, unpredictable narrative. These pictorial forms — in a way analogous to the hypertext of the internet — are decontextualized, altered and/or made to interact with other artistic languages, such as photography or processed images, introducing references and allusions to reality and making it possible to deal playfully with the question of what is real and what is virtual, relying consciously on a strong element of chance.

Artistic practices reveal a lot about the type of cognitive experience people have of their surroundings, so they reflect the change of aesthetic values described above. According to today´s science the universe is not governed any longer by unique and immutable laws and, in a similar way, attitudes in art now assign basic importance to the principle of chance and are more concerned with the versatility of suggestions than with the search for general principles. The work of art no longer aspires to transcendency, to authenticity; what interests more is re-conceptualization, the shifting of meanings, the infinite open possibilities of each search and of each experience. The work of art is now understood as being part of an unfinished process, with the artist limiting him/herself to the activity of exploring this process.

The exposition presents the work of ten artists of different generations living and working in Austria and illustrates the situation of contemporary painting, which is undergoing the process described above leading from analytical and radical deconstruction of “optical” space to the creation of a new, “digital” space.

Among the works of art presented, the idea of analytical deconstruction of pictorial space can best be observed in those of Jakob Gasteiger and Eva Schlegel, who, nevertheless, start off from different concepts.

The salient characteristic of Jakob Gasteiger´s work is the fact that, in order to refer to problems to do with painting and its perception, it involves different languages of plastic expression. One aspect of this are the monochromes, where he applies paint matter onto the canvas with a palette knife or another utensil in a regular and controlled manner. The density of the matter applied onto the surface by its specific bodily quality transforms these monochromes into objects of sculptural character and great refinement. But in spite of this sculptural character they cannot be perceived as anything other than paintings when seen hanging on a wall. As another aspect of this process of deconstruction, Gasteiger brings into question the borderline that supposedly separates painting from sculpture in yet another, similar, way: he creates sculptural aluminium configurations using the technique of allowing the molten material to solidify at random. The viewer immediately associates the act of painting (automatic dripping, gesture) into the sculptural shapes (definite, lasting).

Eva Schlegel´s work is also located somewhere on this line of analytical deconstruction and shift of meanings. In her early work Schlegel used to employ glass surfaces that she covered with texts in order to hint at an illusion of depth and – in an ironical way – refer to the legibility of painting. Like Gasteiger, Schlegel used to analyze painting in terms of the physical qualities specific to the material employed. The problems she analyzes in her recent work are on another level: interested in the effect produced by the illegibility of the glass surfaces (vestiges of memories? traces of oblivion?), she now employs figurative contents strategically chosen and the attraction they are capable of exerting: out-of-focus images of fashion models in pose — enigmatic and seductive — similar to images glimpsed in passing, incorporeal apparitions seemingly taking shape whithin the viewer´s imagination. With static perception of the environment gone, one is left asking what remains between truth and illusion, essence and appearance, the real and the virtual.

Both Thomas Reinhold and Martina Steckholzer raise very specific questions to do with the representability of space in traditional painting on canvas.

In Thomas Reinhold´s painting space is built using a structure formed of different registers of painting technique that converge. In his “Stäbchen und Zapfen”-series (“rods and cones”), presented in the catalogue, layers of very fluid paint cover thick impastos; different registers — dabs, splashings, filigree — interpenetrate on surfaces of pure paint matter. Among the interior organs of this structure built from contrasts of material and colour, smooth white surfaces can be seen that resemble open spaces allowing the light to shine in. The overall effect is one of a pictorial space held together on the inside by a complex architecture that uses registers of painting technique founded on the principle of weight and buttress maintaining the equilibrium.

Martina Steckholzer also takes up the issue of the representability of space, with one difference to Reinhold lying in the fact that she builds a type of space one perceives as unstable. One aspect of the method she uses consists in filming fragments of architecture and projecting these onto the canvas with a beamer in order to then reinterpret them in painting. The result is a fascinating sight of a type of virtual space constructed out of disparate — yet interconnected — elements viewed from perspectives that have been shifted, among other means, by rotating planes around their axis or applying size-scales that produce a baffling effect. These dynamic shapes configurate an architecture that is impossible, turning traditional pictorial space into a new type of space requiring a new organization of the viewer´s modes of perception.

The anamorphic distortions characteristic of Georgia Creimer´s painting are partially created using the same technique as Steckholzer, beaming images onto the canvas. But instead of turning to architectural shapes, Georgia Creimer is interested in recreating the very physical qualities of organic bodies. In her photographic works — closely connected to her paintings — she also uses digital techniques, allowing her to alter objectivity and show a new reality.

The “Biomas” are a species of imaginary creatures, whose morphology is reminiscent of the surrealistic shapes of Arp or Miró. These shapes evoke — above anything else — a sense of organic warmth; at the same time, they look like a product of genetic engineering. The triptych formats presented in the exhibition show trunk-shapes from the animal kingdom – in the process of being elongated and stretching themselves – as well as plant stems and tentacles suggesting reproduction and uncontrolled growth.

Executed with a painting technique that pays great attention to detail, these physical entities seem to be breathing the space they float in. This specific space has been achieved on the basis of very subtle glaze-like applications of paint; it feels like an atmosphere charged with humidity supplying oxygen to these virtual creatures.

The synthetic images created by Peter Kogler, whose work is known to the public mainly through spectacular installations, raise other questions related to the representability of space. These digital images are made up of identical elements subject to an ornamental principle; in the style of all-over painting these images configurate a type of space which cannot possibly be perceived as complete and measurable. The structure of these repetitive, interdependent elements is similar to video-game circuits which — taken as a whole — conjure up the image of an array of powerful machinery consisting of autonomous living entities (ants, interior organs, brains). This space seems to metaphorically unveil the mechanisms of where – within a continuous, non-hierarchical, unfinishable and infinite network – information is being produced and circulated.

The work of Herwig Steiner follows another line of analysis and produces a direct confrontation with the viewer. The artist is interested in the ambiguity that a work of art may produce, the possibility that it may be read/visualized on different levels. For this reason Steiner´s works frequently cannot be dissociated from the physical surroundings they are placed in; they are centred on the specific meaning they produce in a particular context. This clearly reflects an aspect intrinsic to all works of art: they are social facts.

The light-box which is presented in the exposition is made up of a series of juxtaposed texts of different typographies that have been superimposed with colour-registers in digital print that are reminiscent of painted elements. The texts are presented in a fragmented form having no predetermined order, which allows for a speedier process of reading and automatically involves the onlooker. The lit-up colour-registers achieve a spectacular plastic effect; to be left untouched by this visual experience seems impossible. However, this work of art imposes itself in a definite manner on a level lying beyond the pleasure produced by the aesthetic experience: the complexity of its content.

As another reflection of the appearance of new creative processes due to the mutual influence of new technologies and traditional methods, the exposition also presents the work of Nita Tandon, difficult to classify in terms of the technique employed.

Though Nita Tandon´s work is eminently painterly, she actually handles neither pigment, nor canvas, nor brushes, but creates her objects using concrete, wood, plaster or — as in her latest work — plasticine of different colours.

Tandon raises the issue of the experience of perception. Intending an ironic effect, she presents objects of an architectonic character placed against walls that look like paintings — giving the impression in each case of a reverse “trompe l´œil”. In her latest work, where she continues to deal with the problem of perception, the artist uses images taken from the internet. She presents these in considerably magnified form and with the individual pixels covered with bits of plasticine of different colours. The pictorial pointillistic effect produced by these magnified pixels is evidence that there is continuity with respect to the parameters of image-perception, and at the same time it bears witness to the changes that the codes of image- representation have recently undergone. More interestingly still, Tandon – by subverting categories in an ironical way – actually puts into practice a process that runs in the opposite direction to the one employed by today´s digital technology: the materialization of virtual images.

On examining Claus Prokop´s painting, one easily discovers that it cannot be dissociated from his video work. Its most characteristic feature is the repetition of an identical element which is arranged in series, has nothing to do with any ornamental principle and uncovers the fact that the internal structure of a particular painting is organized on the basis of different layers of matter. One could refer to these paintings as abstract landscapes where — in a process similar to the process of natural sedimentation forming ground layers — the same element occuring repeatedly with variations implies the presence of specific geological formations.

Claus Prokop´s video work amplifies this tectonic space-perception as if it was an extension of his painting: one finds the same type of repeated element, forming layers, applied onto a transparent wall. The artist films what is on the other side of this wall, integrating the transparency of the glass between two particular layers of elements by using it to form transitional parts, creating a “dematerialized space”. New technology makes possible a surge of new arrangements: the use of sound inputs that modify or change the image creates certain acoustic-visual rhythms that emphasize the idea of repetition. There is always an element of this kind — similar or identical in form within a given work — to serve to build new spaces and to do so by way of different constitutive processes within each work.

Florian Gruber´s “Print-Series” draws on the language of cinema and of comics; these works — C-prints laminated on aluminium — reproduce a new spatial location.

Based on formal elements taken from the visual code of comics — arrows, parallel strokes, diagonal strokes to stress something characteristic — these surfaces look like sequences of a story, like a succession of events. The fractured shapes convey a sense of movement, acceleration and simultaneity, and are shown like film views shot from extremely high or low angles, or using a focus emphasizing some elements at the expense of others.

The principle of speed and multiplication, of multidirectional dislocation overstepping the internal limits of each sequence, forms part of a narrative that seems to argue in favour of one thing only: the impossibility of showing the object in an immobile state. As viewers all we can do is ask ourselves — quoting Michaux once more — “how to present the object when it has ceased to have any weight, when it has ceased to be impenetrable, ceased to be objective, ceased to be stable? Intact and yet ruined.”*

Translation: Heinrich Blechner

(Catalog Exhibition PICTORIAL SPACE)