IMAGO
IMAGOGalerie Im Leuehof, Schneisingen, Switzerland
November 1991I
opening speech
The adventure of painting such pictures continues when the viewer is ready to look and make discoveries, his eyes wander into the depths, into the surfaces, into the rooms. The colors give him support and the intoxication to go with it.The observation - cool - states: tiny color segments, scraps of fabric, material properties of paper, a touch of glow over strongly contrasting color surfaces - nothing is accidental, forms breathe, every color gives vitality and gains its own character through the one associated with it. A moment spellbound – is not told here – stated, but much was preceded by naming what makes pleasure, depth, spaces, the long distances – walking.Real life and – yes, also what is really inside of us.Titles provoke thought, and but - also - confusion - I suppose that's no coincidence.
Precisely this refusal to give a program challenges the viewer to invent the key to these pictures, these pictures invite him to a “visual adventure”.These images do not surrender easily. But once the viewer ventures in, opens up to the effect of these colors, this tension in the pictorial spaces, he is lost. There is a noticeable pull to open up into the reality of the picture, to follow the path of the colors. Strong and light, glossy and matt, they oscillate in multiple qualities, create spaces, surfaces, sometimes there is an island for the eye of the beholder, but then a contrast accumulates, a peculiar thrill of the senses comes to a head, the eyes encounter a society of colors that irritated.
Through the integration into the picture as a whole, however, how individual color/shadows/dots shimmer here and there, little broken or triumphantly clear, the perception of calculation, a very precisely thought-out composition, arises.
Perhaps that is the reason why this “visual adventure” is not exhausting. Unexpectedly, calm exudes, the picture breathes the diversity of a landscape that gives us new views over and over again. The viewer creates for himself the space of the plane structured by the colors, the gentle heights, the sharp ridges on the horizon, dirty glowing clouds above high chimneys, people and animal figures seem to cross his path, he gets to places where the painting ground has been torn open, obviously shreds and holes were sometimes torn from the picture as a whole
The viewer can take a breath.
Mario Deckers, arthistorian