2022
Fluttering Pictures
different fabrics, different sizes
© Tobias Loemke
2022
Fluttering Pictures
Some fluttering pictures as a hyperimage: They could be installed on a wall, for example on a wall of the fortress during the Salzburg Summer Academy (special thanks to Francis Ruyter).
© Tobias Loemke
FLUTTERING PICTURES
Openings: From abstract paintings to playing with fabrics
Fluttering pictures were created as a response to the tensed, rectangular frames of canvases. They playfully relate paintings to fabrics and vice versa. As with the collages, the special power comes from combining objects that have nothing to do with each other yet: Shimmering fabrics flow out of paintings, paintings are held by solid textiles. The tracing of possible connections of the different materialities and images, the juxtaposition of the glued, the nailed and the taped etc. reveal different relational qualities. This is how the special character of these pictures is created.
But the canvases themselves have a textile origin. And when a painting has a two-dimensional, flat structure, the relationship to woven fabrics becomes obvious. What happens when abstract pictures are explicitly conceived in textile terms? Does it then become a mere fabric collage or does it convey a new multi-layered, special, sensual quality? - Or does this experiment leave us with the realization that painted pictures remain more abstract, more general and more exciting?
Each color is stirred very slowly from pigments, preferably with egg tempera. These circular movements center and focus. The prepared color is painted onto the different fabrics: Given1 and found fabrics, bought linen. The given fabrics are never cut. They are untouchable, but other elements are not. The paper that protects the tables receives painting marks. These gestural strokes are also used for the pictures.
In these paintings I work with gentle but also wild interventions. In a way, I puncture the emerging pictures in order to set them in a state of vibration. This is how beats and clusters sound, but also disturbances that interrupt sound spaces. The pictures rhythmize the wall as a hyperimage. They interact playfully with each other.
Fluttering pictures challenge the Bildermacher (picture-maker) and the viewer alike to doubt cherished norms and attitudes, to trust in the joy of play, to be courageous and to be surprised again and again by objects and their changed appearance in other contexts.
Nevertheless, these paintings profess their painterly origins, conveying the joy of certain colors and sensual materials. They are built layer by layer and develop an almost figurative character. They do not try to discipline the inherent dynamic of doing, but give it space.
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1 Special thanks to Daniela Hoferer.