THE PICTURE IS CREATED IN THE SPACE
to the pictures by Jörg Bachhofer
Jörg Bachhofer draws rooms. At least that's what I thought before I knew that before he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, he studied interior design and at times also works as an architect. With this knowledge, my view of his drawings changed. Now I would say: Jörg Bachhofer builds rooms - and he does this with the means of drawing.
He calls himself a draftsman, but he draws with the experience of the painter and the architect. The artist does not depict any spaces in his works, nor does he depict spaces, but rather shows how space is formed. It creates space - and lets it dissolve again. That's part of his process. Through the impression of being dissolved, of the unfinished, he makes a process of creation visible and comprehensible for the viewer. It makes it possible to understand how space is constituted, how spatiality is created.
His working materials are pastel circles and ink. Two substances that are very contrary. Indian ink is transparent, watery, suitable for creating surfaces. The chalk creates dominant dark lines and it is water repellent. Sometimes chalk and ink meet on the same sheet of paper. First the lines are made with chalk, then the ink surfaces are worn over them, just as we know it from sketches by the old masters, where space, light and shadow are subsequently created in a figurative linear sketch with ink. But with Jörg Bachhofer there is, firstly, no hierarchy in the relationship between ink and chalk, and secondly, there is no assignment in the sense that the line always forms the figure and the surface always explains the background or the space. Both chalk line and ink surface play both roles and lead an independent existence on the sheet. Sometimes surfaces and lines overlap, sometimes voids are created because the surfaces do not meet and thus form gaps. Both the compression and the leaving open create spatiality. An empty space can become a room or - if it is smaller in area than the surroundings - a figure.
If you look at the drawings in terms of the relationship between the figure and the background, things get more complicated. There are lines that are outlines that describe a figure and thus subordinate themselves to the shape. But there are also lines that exist in and of themselves self-sufficient and self-determined and even appear almost physical, becoming a figure. This is due on the one hand to the materiality of the chalk and the recognizable style, the pressure of the hand on the paper, but also to the supposed incoherence with which the lines are distributed over the picture surface. Again there is no hierarchy, every line is equally important.
And then there are drawings, there are lines that are a little lighter, that form a ground, a background that makes a space between the figure and the ground visible. A very interesting undertaking, not to represent the ground with a surface, but with lines. Because the line is so closely associated with the figure, i.e. with the foreground, in our visual habit, a further level appears optically, which is neither figure nor ground, but floats in space like a shadow, a mirage or like an afterimage.
In Jörg Bachhofer's sheets, lines often relate to one another in a central perspective, they form lines of flight and aligned surfaces that, quite architecturally, serve our practiced spatial vision in the surface. On the other hand, there are lines that dissolve this security because they are precisely not subordinate to perspective. Lines converge, for example, but do not meet. This suggestion and at the same time taking back a perspective, as well as the lack of a limitation, leaves the entire situation open. You neither have a vanishing point, nor do you have a contour that grasps the object or space and that could be differentiated against a background. Often one perceives this unlimited, unquantifiable space as a landscape, as the expanse of a landscape area. But it can also be that in this non-hierarchical arrangement a form emerges during viewing, an object, an item - which the eye can let go again just as it has grasped it.
If you look at the sky and think that two planes are flying directly towards each other, you only notice at the moment when they have to meet that they are hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers away from each other. The two planes do not meet because they are traveling in the vastness of the sky on completely different planes. It is precisely this phenomenon of space that the draftsman Jörg Bachhofer creates on the limited surface of a drawing sheet through the complex relationships that he creates between line and surface, background and foreground, figure and space. His rooms are not stable and irrevocable. Rather, they arise and fade in the eye of the beholder.
Opening speech for the exhibition "transit" - Jörg Bachhofer drawings, at raumwerk Munich, 2019
Making decisions / making decisions
on the work of Stefan Wischnewski
In the beginning there was the network. With the so-called “network work”, Stefan Wischnewski has created a genre of its own in the context of art with an everyday item.
In the past, he used the constructive peculiarities of networks to create spatial and extensive sculptural works, which he always related to the world of sport, leisure or architecture through appropriate titles, such as Center Court or National Monument. In a further complex, nets congealed, stiffened with a cover, into autonomous sculptures with recognizable forms from the everyday world, such as cups, vases or masks. In both cases the artist played with the aspect of recognizability, but in very different ways: in the installations, the network was retained as such, only the context was withdrawn from it. The autonomous objects, on the other hand, are reminiscent of classic sculptures in terms of design and shape.
You have to know that there are ball nets, ball stop nets, safety nets, safety nets and goal nets in the sports and leisure sector. All these applications require different sizes, mesh sizes, materials, weaving and braiding types of the ropes from the net, not to mention the type of knots and the edges. Neither the net nor the color itself have a fixed form. The network always gets its shape and purpose through a supporting structure. The "material paint" requires a paint carrier or a container.
In his new work complex, Stefan Wischnewski consciously works with these skills. In order to stay in the image of sport, he begins a new match between net and color by dipping the net in color or pouring it over with color. During the drying process, the paint slowly solidifies and with it the network. During this period, the artist intervenes several times. It affects the distribution, flow and drainage of paint on the network. He hangs the dripping structure upside down. He spreads it open with tools before pouring it down again, putting it around his neck, stretching and pulling. In many rounds it slowly approaches a shape, the appearance of which depends on the flow behavior of the paint, its viscosity, toughness and drying time, as well as the behavior of the network under the constantly changing effects: the solidification of the paint, the laws of gravity, the statics, the room temperature and the way the artist dips, hangs, pours, pours, spreads, pulls, stretches, turns or turns.
One inevitably thinks of Richard Serra's verb list compilation *, a list of terms that describe the sculptor's activities in the working process. Serra wanted to refer to the role of the process in artistic work. And this is the main focus of Stefan Wischnewski's new series of works. In his earlier work he developed the forms of his sculptures based on an idea that he developed based on material and space. Now it is the case that the decisions that the artist makes during the working process do not affect the form itself, but only the conditions under which a form can arise. The form is not made, it is made.
If you want to understand the development process, you start moving. Tilts while looking at it, or lays the head to one side, recognizes noses of paint going downwards, but also running upwards, bumps, folds and curves that sometimes develop with and sometimes against gravity. At some point the object eludes explainability, and that is exactly what makes it up. The relationship between the individual objects is also puzzling. Taken individually, they are independent units, but they have a certain family resemblance. Due to the drying phases, the artist works on several objects at the same time and thus transfers various applications, measures and experiences that arise during the work process from one object to the other. In this complex of works, the relationships between the works cannot be explained by a linear development. Rather, one has to imagine the artistic process as something three-dimensional, as an action in space and in time, as Richard Serra put it in connection with his verb list, as "actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process" *.
What does the use of color mean in connection with the objects? When Stefan Wischnewski speaks of color, he primarily thinks of (white) paint as a substance for plasticizing his nets, a special mixture he developed over time. This special understanding of color as a colored material has led to the most recent works such as big fragment or hattrick dipping the net not only in white, but also in bright colors. As a result, each layer of paint is covered and wiped out by the next one with a new dive or a new pouring. Sometimes the result is that the liquid paint does not cover all of the mesh, leaving colored spots that at first glance look like painting. However, the colors are not set on a surface like in a painting, but sit one above the other on the mesh. This is where the stratification becomes visible and part of the process reveals itself once more. And new interactions arise in the complicated plastic structure of the network: between color and color, between color and white and, last but not least, between color and shape.
One more question remains: how do the new works find their way out into the exhibition space? And what relationship do you have with him when you leave your family in the laboratory, the studio? Here the artist chooses a staging in the room and for the room. The objects formed by gravity must of course be hung up again, they need support from a wall, a frame, a frame or a base. And they need the space around them. Here you can see again that Stefan Wischnewski is a sculptor. He knows exactly what to do to allow space and sculpture to relate to one another: by precisely reflecting on architecture.
In the work five pieces this leads to a very sensual relationship between space and object: the upside down of heaven and earth in the baroque vault, the indulgence of angels, clouds and silk scarves, of sheep and architectural fragments can be found in the objects by Stefan Wischnewski , they give the heavenly Baroque theater an earthly dimension.
Afra Dopfer
* Richard Serra. Verb cunning. 1967-68. Graphite on paper, 2 sheets, each 10 x 8 "(25.4 x 20.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, first published in the journal Avalanche Number 2 in 1971
Published in the catalog "Stefan Wischnewsky" - No look pass edition metzel, 2018
A question of melody
To the work of Katharina Weishäupl
Prologue: By definition, the term “melody” denotes an “independent sound movement that unfolds in time. A tone sequence is also a chronological sequence of tones, but it only defines pitches and their chronological order, but not tone durations. The term “melody”, on the other hand, includes not only the pitch sequence, but also the sequence of tones, i.e. the rhythm. "
Katharina Weishäupl first studied stage design at the Art Academy in Stuttgart, but after a few semesters switched to the video and performance class of the artist Joan Jonas, where she began to stage narrative sequences with absurd or dream-like images. After graduating, she went to Glasgow. There her work changed a lot. If she herself was the protagonist in her early videos, the artist subsequently eliminated herself as the leading actress from her plays. She said: the performative of my early work shifted to the work process itself.
What is that supposed to mean? Katharina Weishäupl's installations always go hand in hand with a long build-up of the work that requires a lot of perseverance. Based on a basic idea, she develops the design during the construction on site and precisely at this location. You can compare this situation with a performance: most decisions are made live and in situ, taking into account the specific environment.
Anyone who has ever accompanied and observed the artist setting up an installation knows what I mean. Standing on a high ladder, she tied and knotted almost invisible, hair-thin nylon threads in the air for days, or she drives her hands over and over again with her hands, with great physical effort, to stick transparent scotch tape on them. It becomes visually clear that this is not just about setting up a room installation or exhibition, but about getting a room volume under control in a puzzling way, measuring a wall, or filling a corner of the room.
In addition to the result, the finished installation, it is also about what the artist does on the way there, it is about the plot. In the program of a performance, the presence of the viewer is intended as part of the work. Katharina Weishäupl does not allow us to participate in the preparations for her sometimes very complicated and elaborate buildings. In return, the artist makes her action in the finished work comprehensible for us: by being challenged to be active in the contemplation.
How does she do it? On the one hand, she chooses, for example, materials and processes that we all know well from everyday life. When working “semper toujours”: she wraps wool around her finger until a very large ball is formed. Everyone has wound up a ball at least once. We are very familiar with the extensive movement as well as the temporal and repetitive aspect of this activity. We may also remember the feel of the thread and carry out this gesture when looking at the object in memory. With wrapping and wrapping, the artist not only introduces an act into her artistic practice that we can identify with, but also chooses a form of work in which the temporal and spatial dimensions coincide.
What comes out of it? The result is a plastic form that has no inside and no outside, no shell and no core, but is through and through, inside and outside the same. This means that the object has no surface either - since it does not differ from the inside. The form is never finished and yet in every moment of its creation. If you imagine unwinding the ball again, nothing would be left. This object tells about itself and how its shape came about. The object is not only the result of an action, but also fulfills all the characteristics of a sculptural sculpture.
In the traditional terminology of sculpture, the figure referred to as "sculpture" was created from clay or plaster of paris in the building principle. It differs from the sculpture, which is created by the removal of hard material such as stone or wood, through the additive joining and joining of a homogeneous material. With the constructive technique of classical sculpture, Katharina Weishäupl creates objects as well as space-consuming installations, depending on which material she uses and how she puts it together. In the work “im Spiegel ist Sonntag” she uses a minimally plastic element, with straws, to fill large rooms. Viewed individually, these are small hollow bodies that have an inside and an outside, a color, a surface, a concise shape, and certain properties such as lightness, colourfulness and sensitivity. She sticks the stalks together and thus builds linear structures that first guide our gaze and then our body through the room. We follow the rhythm of the gentle curves of the stalks, which form under the weight of gravity, with our eyes, while the linear structure directs our body into its interstices.
A line has no shape, but it can describe a shape. The way the artist uses the line, it describes a space, a body, and, according to the lexical definition of melody mentioned at the beginning, an "independent [sound] movement that unfolds in time" through space.
A question that has been addressed again and again in the history of art is that of the relationship between art and everyday life. As the pole of this debate, Dadaism stands as a representative of the total amalgamation of art and life. The art of the Minmal, on the other hand, has radically formulated the postulate of the separation of art and life in “Art is art and everything else is everything else”.
The use of everyday objects in art creates a relationship with the present. The price for this is their "expiration date": things are subject to fashions and classifications. Over time, they lose their relevance and their purpose changes. For her objects and room installations, Katharina Weishäupl uses industrially manufactured materials that come from our immediate living environment. They are not meaningful or symbolically charged. What they have in common is their ability to change: most of the time they are flexible and malleable and can completely change their outer shape. But otherwise you do not need any specific treatment by the artist, no special processing by hand, machines or special tools. You can work with these materials at any time, any place and under any condition; In Katharina Weishäupl's work, these things are simply used differently, their logic is reinterpreted in such a way that they are allowed to develop poetry and beauty. Pointing out the beauty of things is important. Not only because you can see that mundane things like straws, plastic bags, wool and scotch tape can be beautiful, but because things “seen in this way” come back to everyday life, thus bringing the poetry of everyday life to our eyes. This is the most perfect combination of art and life.
To achieve this as an artist, you need a strong sense of the special in everyday life and in life; you need a joy of discovery and life, a love for things and the ability to live completely in the “here and now”.
Afra Dopfer
Opening speech for the exhibition “a question of melody” - Katharina Weishäupl in the Städtische Galerie Landshut 201?
What makes a place a place
To Leo Kornbrusts, memorial for the resistance against National Socialism in the Hofgarten, Munich
If you want to go from Odeonsplatz through the arcades of the Hofgarten to the Haus der Kunst and walk towards the Staastkanzlei, you will come across a sculpture, or more precisely, a stone by the sculptor Leo Kornbrust. The stone, a large cube made of granite, stands in the middle of the path. It bears the sculptor's handwriting. To remember - to commemorate it is written on it. In addition to texts from the White Rose, on the back he has handwritten a farewell letter from a farmer to his “loved ones”, shortly before he was executed by the National Socialists. This text is particularly powerful. He describes in a few words the whole volume of cruelty that lies behind it. This small, laconic letter, immortalized on an impressively large stone, throws me off track every time. Every time I pass there I have to read it and every time I am moved to tears. The intensity of this experience changed my relationship with the place; the stone changed the place.
published in: AN_DACHT 50 new rooms, as part of the guest performance Art and Church, ev. City Academy Munich, 2012