Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Every painting of the series "Portraits of a painting" is accompanied by a little booklet, 18 x 18 cms.
And this booklet contains detailed photographs of each painting. Usually more or less about 30 photographs
with blowups of specific parts of the painting.
The blowups definitely show much more the process by which the painting wasactually established
than the whole finished result.
Because I consider a painting as a form of experiment,
because for me art is a form of research, the booklet with photos
then represents the documentation of that experiment,
of the process accompanying each research.
For me the actual research in this series "Portraits of a painting"
is to look at how coincidence place a role in establishing a final result
and how it interferes and intermediates with me as a
painter performering concious painterly actions on my canvas, trying to compose or decompose chaos.
The photographs, because in fact they are blow-ups much more attract attention to the details,
to how the different layers of paint interact,
how they mix with each other,
how the different paint layers are torn open, because of the pressure of my pallet knife
on top of the previous layers, etc.
It actually forces the spectator to
have a totally different way
of looking at the painting: much more in detail, much more up close,
forcing them to see with their own eyes how the painting was actually established.
For me the process has the same value as the final result,
but the final result can not exist without the process being displayed next to it.
That is why the final result of the experiment, meaning the painting as such,
should always be presented together with the little photo booklet.
Because the two form one Gesamtkunstwerk.