BLICKFELD

Date: 2024
Author: Dr. Sabine Ziegenrücker

An exhibition about the impossibility of being solely oneself? About how significantly an artist’s decisions influence their own work, and the relationship between conscious, controlled choices and processes that are random or inherent to the material? And also about the influence that the exhibition space and the social context have on the works in question? Building on an abstract formal language, the works of the five artists – Pedro Boese, Martim Brion, Ines Doleschal, Franziska Hünig and Ilona Kálnoky – are, in all their diversity, united by a central concern: the question of their own influence on form, on individual creative practice, and on the conditioning effects of external influences. A rigorous vocabulary, often borrowed from geometry, seems tailor-made for exploring rules and norms on the one hand, and aberrations and shortcomings on the other. The conditional nature of one’s own perception, and the question of being trapped within personal, sociological, historical and other frameworks, resonate throughout the works. At the same time, a significant role is accorded to chance, to the idiosyncrasies of the material and to the spatial conditions. How much chance is allowed; is it systematically excluded, or, where appropriate, is the door thrown wide open to let it play a part in the design process?

This interplay between design and chance is particularly evident in Pedro Boese’s large-scale wall installations, the ‘modules’. Square panels form the basic unit, which are installed according to the specific conditions of the location and the artist’s creative intent. Within the composition, circular segments form continuous shapes that seem to strive to unite into a circle, leaping across the individual modules. A repeating pattern is emerging – a continuous motif that is, however, repeatedly disrupted, keeping us in suspense like the cliffhanger of an unfinished story. Some panels even break off abruptly, completely undermining the desire for a perfect, meticulously defined system. It is, at the same time, a play on our perception, whereby the brain strives to quickly recognise familiar patterns, compare them with past experience and interpret them accordingly. This may well differ from what the retina actually depicts, as the brain tends to organise what it sees according to a uniform, coherent logic.

Ever since Rosalind Krauss’s seminal 1979 essay of the same name on the grid, the grid has been regarded as the modernist structure par excellence for eradicating remnants of the narrative, the literary, the realistic and the illusionistic in the visual arts. Aware of this tradition of form and thought, Pedro Boese introduces narrative elements through seemingly random disruptions via the back door.

Jagged edges, fragments as indications of both the obviousness and the vulnerability of systems striving for perfection, the vitality of the torso, and the longing for the ruinous seem inherent in Boese’s play with the modules borrowed from Minimal Art or Concrete Art. This is also evident in the painterly treatment of the surfaces, which feature tonal variations that appear almost like signs of wear and run counter to the mechanistic perfection of the modules.

The serial sequence suggests a fragment of a system that is potentially designed to extend to infinity. Where it breaks off here and there, a further temporal layer is added to the ordered sequence, which seems to call into question the totalitarian, the all-encompassing, and to cast it back upon its own transience. And yet, despite all the disruptions and variations in the fragmentary form, there is always the impression of completeness, of an inner coherence which, precisely because of its fragility, opens itself up to the outside world and engages in dialogue.

In stark contrast, Martim Brion appears to adopt a similarly systematic approach in his works, yet one that is unbroken in terms of form and time. The forms of Minimal Art provide him with his conceptual foundation. The question of the role of chance has given way to conscious, controlled decisions, to perfection, to the finished form, and to the repetitive system.

The sheer materiality of colour is celebrated in the ‘Frisson Modules’ series. The square boxes into which Martim Brion squeezes his paint from the tube are a vivid blue. Their radiance in pink, yellow, green, cyan and magenta fills entire rooms. The frame, acting as a contrast, further intensifies the almost object-like effect of the paint, which seems to want to burst beyond the frame’s boundaries and appears scarcely contained within the square. The square, as a stable form that is at once uniform and neutral, counteracts the striving of these spilling colours with its rigour. ‘Frisson’, translated as ‘shudder’ or ‘thrill’, lends its name to these elements, which—whether individually or as a group, on the wall or on the floor—open up their own space from which one cannot escape: colour in its most alluring yet also aggressive presence.

‘Counter Point’, the three tubes standing in front of the wall and tapering in regular succession, appear to draw on industrial production in terms of form and materiality. The colour scheme of white, black and pink emphasises sharp contrasts, whilst the size and intensity of the colour appear to be in perfect balance. In form and expression, they are akin to the Minimal Art of the American 1980s, which focused on industrial perfection and the suppression of personal, artistic signature. The artist as an individual, or indeed as a creator in the spirit of the nineteenth century, recedes behind the forms and colours, behind the object itself. At the same time, the boundaries with design are being tested. These are installations in space that confront the viewer with their very existence. The question of control versus chance in the field of vision seems to be answered unequivocally here.

The reference to modernist ideas is evident in the ‘Models’ series. In this series of colour prints, nestled between two bold coloured bars – perhaps only visible at a second glance from a distance – lies a delicate technical drawing whose form and style are reminiscent of Bauhaus traditions. With Martim Brion, however, it quickly becomes apparent that these constructions are thought experiments that run counter to the planning of actual buildings. Rather, a hint of irony seems to shine through in this almost iconic sequence of coloured bars and the construction drawings that lead nowhere, marking Modernism – for all its aesthetic fascination – as ultimately a failure.

Ines Doleschal takes a very different approach; for many years, she has been distilling architectural forms in her work, ranging from Constructivism, through the Bauhaus and Brutalism, to contemporary architecture. In her series ‘Faltungen’ (Folds) – works on canvas that have been evolving in ever-new ways since 2011 – it is the forms extracted from the architectural canon of Modernism that Doleschal arranges in her paintings into abstract, colour-rich, vibrant compositions of great harmony. Subtly nuanced fields of colour, whose inner mood captivates with its elegance, are woven together as angular forms, edges, lines and prisms into cryptic formations – ‘Faltungen’, in fact, which represent structures of extreme physical and spatial complexity. The echo of urban contexts is inherent in them, without the architecture or locations being identifiable. At the same time, the promise of Modernism in this painting—with its conflicting yet balanced tones and forms—appears unbroken; it has been examined for its substance and found to remain valid.

The ‘Form follows’ series of collages takes as its starting point photographs of façade elements that define the layout of shopping streets, with their recurring grid patterns, in both the East and the West. These photographs are overlaid with charcoal, and red elements are collaged onto them as markers; these frame the black-and-white architectural forms, emphasising their significance like exclamation marks, whilst simultaneously unifying the works on the canvas as abstract compositions. The rhythm and repetition of these architectural elements—which can be interpreted as industrially manufactured—are magnified in detail, acquiring a monumental quality; yet, through the use of charcoal, they also take on a velvety surface that lends them a vibrant sheen.

Ines Doleschal, who, amongst other things, campaigns for a fair place for women in art (and art history) through the Fair Share initiative, has focused her exploration of the Bauhaus on the female artists who worked there. It is well known that even at this institution, which was progressive for its time, women were confined to marginalised disciplines such as pottery and weaving. In her latest work, Doleschal has examined Gunta Stölzl’s oeuvre in detail. Stripes with subtle colour nuances, borrowed from weaving but oriented vertically rather than horizontally, set the tone here.

In her painting, Franziska Hünig takes a different approach: she creates large-scale painterly installations from painted advertising hoardings. Recycled advertising hoardings from huge 10 x 12-metre displays on building façades in the urban landscape form the starting point. They are cut up and the reverse sides are painted in the studio using large brushes and a squeegee. The application of paint appears glazed in some places and impasto in others, depending also on the surface of the substrate. Various qualities of the painterly are thus brought to the fore in a generous gesture.

On site in the exhibition space, the tarpaulins are then, over the course of several days’ work, layered upon one another like the layers of paint in a picture, arranged to create rhythms, and with foregrounds and backgrounds balanced out. In doing so, Franziska Hünig regards one side of the installation as the front, and the process of installation itself as painting. A finely tuned system of colour and rhythm takes hold of the space, radiating out onto the surrounding walls as well. The result is a comprehensive and multi-layered work that cannot be taken in at a single glance. The front and back of the wall – which one would actually like to bring together visually and conceptually – elude the all-encompassing gaze and expose the space, and thus us as viewers within it, quite directly to a physical experience of colour.

Colour tones emerge like chords on an oversized concert grand piano; just as fleeting along the timeline, they create moods that linger and are somehow present in the space, yet cannot be grasped by sight alone, as is usually the case. Through the rolls that flow into the space, harbouring a further potential colour space within them and, in part, developing opulence and movement in baroque folds, these ‘colour tones’ are carried even further into the space, as if seeking to amplify their effect. Thus, an industrial waste product is temporarily transformed into a painterly 360-degree system which, despite the partly pop-inspired yellow, pink and black, is one of great subtlety.

This nuanced, refined approach to colour is also evident in the ink works – small, intimate worlds of colour on paper which, owing to their materiality, possess a quite different character. Whilst they form a distant echo of the expansive installation in the poetry of their colour harmonies, the lightness and freedom of the brushwork convey a sheer delight in composing, with great subtlety and, despite all the expressive movement, above all an inner coherence.

The works of the sculptor Ilona Kálnoky exemplify the question of the interplay between conscious artistic decisions and the random, material-immanent processes. In her ‘sculpture sketches’, the sculptor has, in a process spanning many years, laid out various possibilities for sculpture on a shelf as a display. Everyday materials such as sand, salt, clay, foam, plexiglass, plaster and a balloon are arranged here in a seemingly casual manner, as if for a trial run.

They are folded, poured, oxidised, squashed, laid out and arranged. Technically simple actions are demonstrated on them as examples; on closer inspection, these also form the reference points for the order on the shelf, which appears unusual at first glance. Failure is also part of these actions, as evidenced by a burst balloon. The materials are examined for their texture and physicality. This gives rise to archetypal forms which, in their sensuality, are by no means merely material samples, but take on a character of their own, each with its own specific quality, which also brings a smile to the viewer’s face – for instance, when the clay sausages lie on top of one another and deform under their own weight, or when the spilled silicone drapes over objects like a tongue – allusions to human physicality included.

Through the processes Ilona Kálnoky applies to the materials, they take on forms that have a narrative quality. These are simple, almost incidental interventions: foam forced into a glass, stretching upwards like fingers or rabbit ears to form a ‘V’ for victory; or the salt crystals that settle on the cylinder and glisten delicately and poetically like stars in the sun. Even the scattered sand, in its circular form, seems to embody layers of meaning that unite the ephemeral and the eternal, as if it were made up of tiny stones millions of years old. At the same time, these forms also reveal a great deal of humour, as they are forced into order on a storage shelf, demonstrating strange processes imbued with great solemnity yet devoid of any discernible meaning. As ‘sculpture sketches’, they claim to be drafts for ‘proper’ sculpture. In any case, they are a subtle play on the concept of sculpture, which is rooted in eternity and representation.

In her new work, *Parcours 1–3*, the trained ceramist has fired the plates to a dark, almost black finish. In a second firing, the identical glass plates were fired on the same ceramic ‘parcours’, yet each yielded quite different results. This seriality gives rise to a sequence of varied movements, attributable solely to chance during the firing process.

“BLICKFELD – the inevitability of the self” brings these five very different artistic approaches into dialogue with one another. Among other things, the exhibition explores the negotiation of forms and their dissolution, as seen in the work of Boese and Kálnoky; the grid and the seriality of modern thought in the work of Brion and Boese; a fascination with materiality in the work of Brion, Kálnoky and Hünig; the subtlety of colour values in the work of Doleschal and Hünig; and the use of architectural forms in the work of Brion and Doleschal. What they have in common is a reflection on the – at times self-critical – question of their own role within the interplay of diverse influences, whilst remaining conscious of being part of a long history of art.