266. Candle-holder (Kerzenhalter)
266. Candle-holder (Kerzenhalter), 2026, Öl auf Leinwand, 40 × 30cm
A friend recently asked me to give him the “elevator pitch” of my exhibition. One hour later, he said he didn’t know that the building had 125 floors.
Maybe I gave him the stairwell pitch by mistake. I will try to make it into an elevator pitch here. Here goes. I have lived in Geseke now for almost 6 years. I have had three solo exhibitions. In the first, I painted people’s hands in Geseke. In the second, I painted objects that I borrowed from people in the community. In the third exhibition I painted from photographs of spontaneous situations I experienced here, a birth, a bonfire and so on. As these were mainly portraits, to them I added paintings of ice creams, which I consumed with people in Geseke. For this exhibition, I am doing more of the same types of paintings: objects on loan, hands of friends, and ice cream paintings. There will also be some copies and paintings from live models. It is essentially a diary of where I go, what I do, who I meet, what I see. You have reached the top floor. [doors open]
The stairwell version was better, in my opinion. In it I discussed the New Objectivity movement in Germany, which was a rejection of expressionism and return to neutral objects and people and places. The goal of New Objectivity was, I believe, to make good paintings, despite the subject, and even sometimes in resistance to the subjects—which were often quite messed up. Today, we are not all living in Giverny like Monet (expressive Impressionist) or starting a revolution like Lissitzky (avant garde modernist). Sometimes we, you and me, have to rework color to a point where we feel something and that although it makes something new, it feels like it has always been there. For example, I am trying to do that with this candle holder that is borrowed from an acquaintance.
Think about it like this: you can’t un-hear some songs. Take a song like Tracey Chapman’s Fast Car for example. I can remember hearing it first at eight years of age. I was playing it the past couple of months, just appreciating its resonance, clarity, thoughtfulness and richness. That is the kind of quality I would like to have with color. New objectivity was tossed aside in Germany as Expressionism came to be seen as humanist, and figuration was seen as gloomy and even elitist. However, New objectivity is nowadays far more humanist because it aims at a shared language. It seeks new statements in an established language of figuration and not an entirely new grammar that throws the past out of the window, as with Kirchner’s city nights in paint or Kandinsky’s visual jazz, reprised in even more abstract form by the Jackson Pollocks and Rothkos of the mid last century. The end point of expressionism is everyone creating their own private language, which as Wittgenstein points out, would not actually be a language because it is not shared. I guess I am interested in sharing something in painting rather than unilaterally broadcasting.
You have reached the bottom floor. [doors open]
In other news I have joined a book club. It is a nice change. I normally write about books in my blog and don’t usually receive much feedback on those books. In the book club, I can enjoy a little conversation again about the novels that influenced me and gather up some new ones based on the recommendations of friends. I don’t usually mention the experience of life in a new culture and language, however, it is worth noting that I finally feel at least a sense of ease in the German language. The book club stretches me to express things clearly and to quickly understand the conversation in German. It has been a hard road but we are getting there. The next step is writing this blog in German.
In Australia, in the art world, there was very much a focus on words. However, in Belgium and then Germany for me there was more of a Ramsey’s kitchen vibe in the academy and later a feeling that words are low in the list of priorities for producing an artwork. The world. The word. It is a topic for another post. Suffice it to say that where I started my art career words were vital to the work and I think it is all ultimately focused on this moment here now in my case, with me typing at the keyboard with my eyes closed in an effort to orient the painting that I have just completed into my season, late summer, and my adopted nation, principally for myself but also for anyone interested in the unfolding novel of my work, from which they might have torn a page or at least folded a corner.
