II. 2002 – 2008 Arbeitswelt in den USA - Tylle, H. D.

Since 1979, it can be observed that Tylle has been increasingly illustrating a conflict and directly incorporating
portraits in the pictures. The experience of the individual thus finds greater expression in
the picture and stresses the discrepancy between the personality and the mechanized world of labor.
This brings us to an important thematic aspect of Tylle’s pictures: The relationship between man and
machine is an idea developed each time anew out of the situation in question. By rendering concrete
experience and by depicting a precisely designated workplace, he avoids generalized, ostentatious
statements. It is not without good reason that the sketches executed immediately on the shop floor
are so important in Tylle’s work. In the production of the large pictures, he draws on the sum of his
experience on location. The stock-taking in the sketches is recombined in the large pictures, reinforced
and concentrated in new juxtapositions. The large pictures are therefore not intended as photographic
replications of the work situation, but are the outcome of prior experience and research.
Also absorbed is historical experience, the artistic investigations of the 19th century of the world of
labor, in the pictures of Courbet and Menzel, for instance. Characteristic of the carefully considered
and constructed form of depiction is the compositional decision not to demarcate and consolidate
the pictures at the edges, but to make the action appear to continue beyond. Within the picture,
diagonals, curves and other formal elements guide the eye so that at least one interpretation arises
that doesn’t quickly end the viewing process, but repeatedly brings it back into the picture.
The pictures from the Volkswagen plant urgently address the issue of automation, i.e. the worker’s
relationship with and participation in a work process dictated by automation, gigantic machines and
production lines. The backs of individuals emphatically placed in the picture, conveying an impression
of interchangeability and anonymity, are an important formal means of stressing this aspect.
It is precisely here that anonymity becomes a dominant leitmotif, because the large picture “VW
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