Leseprobe

52 The following artworks tell of the mental and physical movements characteristic of painting as a medium. Paint- ing – like any other art form – is the result of a concentra- tion of things. It is a form of imagination that neither takes place linearly (one event after another) in time nor can it be grasped from a single point (simultaneously) with one glance. This makes it more than a static snapshot – at least that is what Ernst Ludwig Kirchner claimed when he addressed the (obvious and often questioned) limitation to two-dimensional pictorial space, describing the paint- ing process in his art as follows: “What is considered a painting is something that can be assimilated in one go. That is a great limitation. I do it like this: I move and gather up the arising, successive images inside me to form an inner picture. This is what I then paint.”1 We may think of Kirchner thus as a collector of images who circled around his subjects, moved physically within them and brought these multiple perspectives together in a mental act of creation. He observed that “[a]ll human experience of seeing and feeling [derives] way more from this state of movement”.2 Kirchner’s Nackte Frauen auf Waldwiese (Nude Women in Forest Meadow) gives an impression of this multiperspectival process of capturing movement. The bent leg, breasts and face of the figure on the right, for example, are a fusion (reminiscent of Cubism) of frontal and side views, with the painter’s position also changing (top view, bottom view). The question of nature coupled with its quality as a dynamic network of relationships – including people and things – come into play here. If Kirchner was a collector of pictures who circled around his subjects, Maria Lassnig chose a more direct route into hers. Lassnig’s art is about perceptions and sensations. Her awareness of real bodily experiences, such as the feeling of pressure when sitting or lying down, is the starting point for her painting. How does one go about depicting these kinds of sensations that palpably defy depiction? Lassnig’s painting is an attempt – with the eye directed inwards – to contour bodily experiences and awareness. 1 Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Nachzeich- nungen seines Lebens. Katalog der Sammlung von Werken von Ernst Ludwig Kirchner im Kirchner-Haus Davos (Bern/Fribourg, 1979), p. 344. 2 Ibid. 3 Ulrike Prasch, “Ika Huber. Jardin VI”, in: Bilder. Skulp- turen. Objekte , Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg (Freiburg, 2009), p. 24. 4 Cf. ibid. You can actually walk around the installation Bank (Bench), which was made by the painter Susanne Kühn and the architect Inessa Hansch as a joint collaboration. Including sitting on it, various activities are encouraged. The individ- ual painterly and architectural components of this work are interdependent and cannot be attributed to either one or the other medium: painting and architecture form a unity. The spatial zones created here exist simultaneously and yet it is only physically possible to see one part of the work at a time. By physically moving, one’s own relation- ship to the work invariably changes. The (imaginary) internalisation of the paintings takes up just as much space as the (actual) act of viewing. Circumambulation, the memory of what has already been seen, the expect­ ation of what is yet to be seen, as well as the mental combination of the components, are the fundamental parameters of perception. The act of mentally piecing together different aspects connects this work with Ika Huber’s paintings, because the latter also seem to consist of different parts, which are arranged next to and (as if veiled) behind one another in swirls and fine layers, in voids and luminous clusters of colour. They are reminis- cent of dreams in which some things are vivid and clear, many things are blurred and randomly appear all of a sudden without a compelling context. The components seem to have a life of their own – Huber lets them be and upholds their fragile equilibrium. Ulrike Prasch describes Ika Huber’s pictures as “mementos”.3 In Jardin VI (Gar- den VI), for example, Huber captures the view from her studio window into her mother’s garden and a dual mode of memory work (emotional as well as local) is enacted.4 ­