Catalogo download - Matthias Brandes

they can even fl y. I fi nd it perfectly plausible.
In your recent works there are also some female
fi gures. As stately and as holy as Madonnas.
Could you explain this new shift?
In actual fact, I’ve always painted portraits and
fi gures, even though I’ve never decided to make it
my main work. Figures are a very slippery terrain.
To put it bluntly: it’s easy to make a mess of things
when painting fi gures... After all, it’s a subject that
has been experimented so much in the history
of art that there are works that simply cannot be
surpassed. If you aren’t prepared just to make do
with mundane expressionistic deformations or
caricatures, you fi nd yourself competing against
giants. It’s a subject I like and one I’m deeply
attached to for personal reasons, but I must confess
I have many scruples. Too many, possibly.
Your paintings are drenched with emotion.
They say a lot about you. Do you paint more
for yourself or for the person who buys the
painting?
I believe in the importance of the painting above
the sofa. I like to imagine what goes on in the home
of someone who’s bought a painting of mine.
Thinking this person will see it in the morning,
when they wake up, and in the evening, before
going to sleep. Looking at it in natural light, or lit
by an electric lamp or even by candlelight. And
every time the painting will look different, and the
observer will never get tired of looking at it, even
after years and years. This is because the painting
contains a secret – one that can be guessed at but
never discovered entirely.
In a society like the one we are living in today,
bombarded by powerful and obsessive images
that come not only from television, but also
from the Internet and through all forms of
digital communication, what is the role of the
painter?
In the past, painting had a monopoly over
the production of images. There were special
places for pictures, such as churches and grand
buildings, and painters formed the collective
conscience of their age. Now, with photography,
the cinema, television and all the rest, painters
are reduced to no more than expressing absolute
subjectivity. The popular imagination is entrusted
to the extraordinarily rapid and all-pervading mass
media.
Painting can’t compete with these processes. Its
task is to create areas of contemplative perception,
outside the realm of time. From this point of
view, painting is and remains irreplaceable, for it
creates an inner “counter-world”. Take Rothko, for
example, who in my view is one of the absolute
masters of the twentieth century. You can’t take
in something from one of his works without
gathering yourself in contemplation. That’s it: the
more contemplation it requires, the more I like a
painting. And the more painting acquires meaning
today.
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