Ausstellungen

Texte Prof. Dr. Günter Zehnder (Kunsthistoriker) Neri Batista - Curitiba (Critico de Arte) Günter Braunsberg, Nürnberg (Kunsthistoriker) Klaus Treuheit, Dr. phil., M.A. (Composer & Pianist)

Biografie

To move on to the immediately following, urgent question: What does the image mean to us? What chords are struck when we view it? Succinctly, all that can be said is:

1) At least one chord needs to be there.

2) Its tuning defines the sound that is heard.

3) The surrounding space defines the resonance (artistic, social). 

Let me add to these statements the fact that not only the forces existing in our consciousness affect and bring about something when we view an image (or rather that there are nameable effective forces above and beyond our specific will):

1) The compulsion to consummate form: well-known from narrative analysis. In order to tell a tale (to the end), structural aspects will assert themselves. Only up to a point can I tell the tale ad libitum. With respect to the process of perception, this means: one can also see dots as eyes (compare FORTY’s Substrato Humano).

2) The association of form: an oval form becomes a face; pose conveys expression (FORTY’s Pyramid).

3) Supplementing: fragments are completed, amended. Abstraction mobilises inner routines of depiction, which function as triggers and thus create a space for projection.

FORTY’s artistic development deserves consideration; he does not let diverse cultural influences pass through untouched, but gains basic stature from their disintegration -  a word with many meanings, also in inorganic chemistry. As an autodidact in the best sense of the word (in art, he did not learn to carry the ashes, but brought the glow of the creator to his training), he also taught himself with the help of academic institutions. Born in the hinterland of Brazil, moved by Dürer’s etchings as a mission-school pupil, he did not eschew – still very much a child – separation from his family. Uninterrupted artistic work, success and the accompanying hostilities; this catalogue of works from the past decade shows him to be in a particular phase. His knowledge of nothingness, the imaginary and the existent has given him the strength to accept a state of jeopardy. Several creative periods now lie behind him; he does not repeat himself, does not cling to the routines of reproduction once attained, but remains true to himself: A seeker after human truth.

Artistic recognition and pictorial acquisition always mean the endowment of meaning. This represents a single-handed creation of the New World. The aura of FORTY’s works is evidence enough. The aristocratism here is not arrogance, but a manifestation of constant searching: turned inwards, creativity always means gnawing away at the self.

In the sphere of fine art, new creation inevitably leads to the creation of new vocabulary. The aim - mutatis mutandis - is to eliminate the figures (from piano writing, for example) as such. What can the new feed upon? The unconscious, the subconscious? New techniques? New aims? But the influence of tradition cannot be switched off. There is always a subjective mediation for the individual artist - perhaps in the sense of sub-iectum, the act of subjection to something? But sensitivity, power, assertiveness lead subjectivity to expression, and thus make it exist – make it substantial.

But what then, is substance?

Devising the play of forms, colours, rhythms, balance, force and capability of projection; also a compulsion to relinquish, to keep conventions and distraction at a distance – all these are constitutive elements. Mastering technique while retaining one’s own creative power. And no illustration of a (didactic) idea or credo. Painting always creates; it is an object, has expression. 

FORTY’s works have long met with a response: in 1987, in the catalogue of an exhibition in Sao Paulo, Emanuel v. Lauenstein-Massarani stated that FORTY was driven by a search for human truth. – What is that supposed to mean? Does art not tend to be a matter of technique, brilliance, trends: i.e. the choice of subjects and their processing? It is that as well. But the framework is essential: the authenticity. What might that be? Is the work of art at one? – and with what? – with itself. Obviously, the aesthetics of reception come into play here; they are capable of picking out and defining routines of depiction, and breaches and disavowals of those routines.

So where do we locate artistic creativity and the work that is based on it? When can we refer to it at all?

Artistic creativity is always a matter of the existent, the imaginary and – of nothingness. It is located within a markedly human-existential dimension, therefore. Humanity is defined, above and beyond mere being, by the possibility of self-perception and a projective power – in face of nothingness. ‘Savages’ feel that they are being observed by their deity, the Central European is oriented on the valid contemporary career aspirations. The concept of normality sets margins which are regarded as ‘natural’ and perhaps even appear that way.

Artistic creativity is always an expression of the imaginary as well: of those things that cannot be seen. So it is more than reproduction. It is also seeking, finding, showing, concentrating, symbolising; a translation into other dimensions, making people aware of dimensionality. In other words, it is not fundamentally naive. It is not completely taken up with doing, but also encompasses inactivity. One might think of film editing: the cut is not shown, but it is certainly visible. It is manifest in what has been assembled.

In ontological terms, FORTY’s dimension is the existential, within the imaginary and before the background of nothingness. As the perception and realisation – the making perceivable - of what is not there. It is also a mediation of the experience of nothingness; nothingness as the precondition to something, as a vessel for perception. His art plays with the mode of perception; it is a presentation of the image content as such; mists, depth, temporal invariance, the spatiality of the projection. A translation of the multi-dimensional into two dimensions. In this way, it leads to an objectifying of expression, which is effective in several respects.

Insight into this process can be gained by examining the phenomenon of masks, particularly those found in Africa and the Americas: in autochthonous use, they function as a symbol, a cipher within the life context of the users, often over the course of generations. For us they can be objects of art; the subject of artistic perception.

This delineates another point of artistic creativity, self-assertion and being perceived: particularly in the so-called melting-pots, actually the various ethnic groups live alongside one another, hardly amalgamating. Certain criteria (e.g. origins, skin colour and religion) become prerogatives – and are used pejoratively towards others in order to underline the dominant identity structure. Supposed tradition serves to exclude other, discrete concepts. The capacity to judge is replaced by a fetishism of provenance.

It is worth following up the reference to masks with respect to FORTY’s painting – I need only point out in passing the mask-like quality of his faces and compositions and the transcendental aspect of his objects/images (cf. “Iris”). His painting is transpersonal, functionalising personal references (kinship, i.e. the mode of kinship or affinity), generations, breaks and transitions in life-cycle, death, the afterlife: the incompatible - continuing to live despite disappearance. Becoming aware of one’s own individuality is conveyed through the experience of nothingness, of death, of fear. The inner structure develops into auto-dynamics that push the artworks onto - create - the MARKET, mediating demand in a rational way. Appreciation and acceptance are conveyed via the common means of interexchange: money.

Mr. Braunsberg has already tackled the subject in his essay, so I will comment only briefly on the technical and art-historical assessment of FORTY’s painting. It is almost possible to overlook his mastery of painting as such, hit as we are by the flood of dense interlocking relations and references which he directs towards us. Let me characterise it:

1) As virtuosity when handling three-dimensionality, depth, simultaneous ambiguity and total clarity, multi-layering within a two-dimensional realisation.

2) A multi-dimensionality of graphic elements in the painterly image: application of dots, dashes, lines, structures – also in the substrate: creases in Ballett Breù - misting (e.g. in Pyramid). Such elements are often characterised by a smooth transition into the painterly.

3) His handling of colour and – inseparably connected - of colour contrasts, as in “O Casal” or “Ballett Breù”.

4) Multi-dimensionality in two dimensions = painting.


What is the purpose of painting?

Surely it only creates more misunderstandings in a world in which it should be - at best – decorative? Like art as a whole – surely it is only an epiphenomenon in our rational reality, oriented on efficiency and functionality, which we think that we know so well. And yet, observing the international art market with its exorbitant sums of money, one could get the idea that our global economic system - once basic needs are covered - regards the investment of accumulated profits in just such useless matters as a high point: in other words, all this wealth culminates in the acquisition of artworks. Do they perhaps serve no more than a diffuse need for prestige? That cannot be ruled out, but surely it is also an indication of the content of art. It characteristically transcends precisely those calculable contexts of our world, which - more than ever in the age of turbo-globalisation – raise the question whether there is a meaningful existence/world beyond bare economic calculations - or in other words, profitability.

Klaus Treuheit, Dr. phil., M.A., composer & pianist. www.klaustreuheit.de