Galleries – Helmut Federle: Let there be a picture

From the appetizers you cannot necessarily deduce the main course. As an aperitif, the gallery next to St. Stephen’s offers Analytical Arithmetic. So let’s get the bill right away. okay the broke downinvoice. a quarter of an eighth. . .

No, not wine, but clear relationships. Mathematical arrangement. At least you don’t look inside the glass, but through. Through the login pane, the shop window is at ground level. And you see a table, which, in turn, does not mean a festively set table, but “Table F” from Helmut Federle’s “Null Bild Series”. (Not that “out of business”—the literal translation of “appetizer”—will be there. It’s part of his artwork.) Acrylic (and geometry) on aluminum sheet. The painter clearly and accurately highlights parts of the overall space.

Thin primitive soup

Sure enough, this is strictly on the second floor no tracking. Well, at least you’re making an unnoticed leap in time of nearly 30 years. From the 1990s to the present. Even if you climb stairs and don’t jump straight. The only geometric element in the current works of the Vienna-based Swiss artist (born in Solothurn in 1944) is the panel’s rectangle. The rest is quiet business. dreary melancholy; Abstract Mood Expressionism, perhaps, comes across as quite impressionistic. And my elegiac.

In the first room, at least beginning relatively indefinitely, a primordial soup is boiling. Acrylic paint and vegetable oils merge into an indistinct murmur, to the chatter before the first creation “Let there be …”. Significantly, the authorship of the “Informal Multitudes” series takes you into an “undefined and uncertain section”.

Later, they are also nothing more than points and gestures, but they are very naturally distributed. Abstract worlds are just like landscapes It is happening? Just suggesting this? The fact that it could be something (or rather vague, rough memories, awakened associations) is reinforced by the very concrete titles of the images: “Blume und Baum”. Or migratory birds are supposed to land on a wintering Japanese river (“Bird Migration of the Azusa Gawa River in Winter”). One inevitably seeks out the plants and birds mentioned in the pantomime forest, and interprets the dots and lines accordingly. Believe the word more than your eyes. the Colorful Colors are rare, yellow pushes itself into aquatic white as a topographical accent, as an island or beach opposite.

Water the painting to make it bloom

“Patched Seashore in April”: a disturbance in the sky that is supposed to lead to a storm. while at other times the lyrical Informel seems to give way to melancholy—referring to Nicholas Lenau’s “Red Songs,” a cycle of poems in which the beloved suffers a blessing in harmony with restless nature. “Feather, oh tears, okay!” And then it started raining. I lyrically regret it reader His suffering, the wind to his lyrical self. Reed trembles. In the case of Federle, who incidentally taught at the State Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf until 2007, things were relatively quiet, cane.

Has someone suddenly become a romantic in their old age, spreading their landscapes wet from the soul in front of their audience? Because the “wetlands” (watercolors) are also his pictures, which he diligently waters (no, not with his salty tears, with sweetwater), so that the painting flourishes. (Among other things, this means that Federle likes to apply paint thinly.) Or is the drawing simply “natural”? In any case, it is an act of creation. by this The creator of painting is clearly a tamer of chaos, taming chaos while creating it himself, ultimately giving birth to a living order as impermanent as the weather.

Takes bid, becomes passes

Everything is constantly changing, in motion, and the creation process still seems to be in progress, not yet complete. A constant give and take, wiping (with a cloth) and washing, until at some point the ephemeral becomes inseparably a blur. Meanwhile, the color will subside with time. You want to literally be drawn into a wealth of nuances for them to reveal themselves to you. And you should. Say dive deeper. Because from afar escape from Maybe half the offer is yours.

“Candy” requires intimacy anyway. Papers of the “Stockholm” series of the early 90s, in which creamy chalk has a dull shade, that is, a rough surface, a blurred and grainy structure.

The gallery is hung in a well-ventilated manner. The wall next to the front door remains blank. Not for your own notes, I’m where. For the void! You could theoretically ponder it now, if you’re probably wondering what’s up with that Title The show is about: “Acknowledgments”. After all, it can some Meaning: acknowledgment, affirmation, acknowledgment, thanks. . .