uncoated - Galerie EIGEN+ART

into kitsch or border on a specific historical
style, that you imitate classic modern
archetypes and unknowingly fall into a
historical style, like perhaps mimicking
Cézanne’s landscapes. It’s important for
me to find my own vocabulary for painting
gardens and landscapes. At first I can
only do that by experimenting with drawings
and then trying to transpose these
results into painting. I always knew that I
had to start by observing accurately, and
only then would I be able to move on in
my own direction. This is why I also see
the drawings as a study or as preliminary
analytical investigations that lead me to
take further steps.
HL: I see basically two possibilities for
dealing with the difficulties in landscape
painting. Either one finds his own idiom,
which should indeed prove very difficult
in this genre, and not only because everything
has already been played through,
from the photo-realistic to the abstract
landscape, but also because landscapes
have a much shorter shelf life than, for
instance, interiors. If one would like to
allow himself to be led by observation, he
can’t simply copy objects loaded with
historical significance into the picture
and fancifully combine them on the canvas.
That would contradict your entire approach
of beginning with observation. But
as I said, searching for natural ornamentation
and dissecting it on the canvas are,
for me, promising approaches towards
finding an authentic pictorial language.
The other way would be to put the pictures
one paints more or less conventionally
in a specific context. You define the
framework yourself, as it were, in which
the pictures should come across, and
thus immunise yourself as an artist against
the conventional patterns of reception
that adhere to the genre.
MW: Yes, there are various possibilities.
I can search for the solution myself on
the canvas, but I also think beyond it, to
integrating the pictures into the scenes I
am working on in tandem. Then the pictures
don’t stand for themselves as paintings;
they are no longer the window to
the world but become themselves again
an object in space.
HL: That would be the second best
way …
MW: For a painter the best way is obviously
to have an idea and invent a new
genre. One looks for the intrinsic justification
for his paintings.
HL: Do you actually even need such a
safeguard anymore? Hasn’t it long been
the case that the art market defies all con-
cerns regarding content, criticism and selfcriticism
with its prices?
MW: I am aware that I need legitimation
and can’t just be a landscape painter,
but rather must open up beyond a certain
point, in some way. In the end I can only
glean from the experiment, i.e. look at
what comes out on the canvas that I find
convincing. You can only astound the
practiced observer with something new,
and then you also reach the moment when
you have satisfied yourself. You have to
find a pictorial language for which there
aren’t really any concepts yet, that still
can’t be classified. The painting has to
make room for itself.
HL: But the question of how the painting
is to make this room for itself has still
not been answered. I find the popular
answer that the painting should spark the
observer to imagine freely as too simple.
MW: Surly I am also looking for a nonsubjective
binding character to my paintings,
only I have no name for it; it’s much
more a feeling that I trust here, a feeling
that what I have painted is in some sense
successful and not important only for
me. What I can say with certainty is that
there was a basic interest for me when I
was painting the interiors that I still have
in painting landscapes: the interest in the
relationship between the object and the
space. This connection between the two
styles of painting is still there.
HL: But you now interpret this relationship
in a completely different way!
MW: Yes, I am trying to balance the
relationship between the object and the
space in a different way.
HL: At this point a universal angle
comes fully into play, because our relationship
to objects and space pertains to
the fundamental scheme of our experiences
which we use to apprehend the
world and with which we collectively operate
in the world. For me, your interiors
embody a painted perception of the
world; in it a definite cultural self-concept
is articulated in a highly concentrated
way …
MW: A perspective that, for you, has
spent itself?!
HL: Yes, western societies suddenly
find themselves subjected to the harsh
pressures of reality; it is ever less convincing
to describe ourselves, as we did
up to now, as a post-modern society in
which anything goes. We are looking now
for a relationship to reality that is constructive
but not contingent. This is why
it’s fascinating for me to see how artists
undertake a change in style in their own
work while society is simultaneously undergoing
this process of change. Perhaps
the tedium you find in continuing to paint
in a particular way also has something
to do with a change in the social climate,
with a breakdown in the cultural climate
that you are subjected to and which you
are reacting to.
MW: Well, we’ll see.
60
Gartenstudie I
2008
Óleo sobre lienzo /
Oil on canvas
50 × 60 cm