Berlin – My relation to Berlin is an interrupted one, just as the
appearance of the city is defined by interruptions.
In this sense, Max Ernst said about the collage: it is a
combination of the most different materials and contents
which do not belong together on one level and the spark
of poetry which jumps over it.
In this sense, to me the city is a large, constantly changing
collage. It is a kaleidoscope which creates new aesthetic
orders and arrangements in front of the onlooker’s eyes
with every movement.
The approach of many of my pictures to this theme,
therefore, is subject to this very principle.
Dichotomies are positioned within an ordered tension:
Artistic gestures againstgraphic precision
Abstraction against objectiveness
Monochromes against polychromes
Printed against painted
Organic against technical
Old against new
Extraordinary against trivial
Series of memorials, which symbolise the lost classical
Prussian and a hint of the lost world, stand against the
abstract model of the project of the future “Potsdamer
Platz”. Foreign artefacts, printed and included in the
collage, correspond in their dissonance to the abstractly
acting technical shapes of the constantly changes face
of Building Site Berlin.
The recognition of precise objects and locations enters
playfully into new relational connections and in conjunction
with the unusual.
Another attempt is the transference of the collage principle
into pure painting in order to obtain a new aspect
with the same technique, the same apparently banal
material, or to reflect it in an unusual colour.
Working with the same routine artistic gestures from theme
to theme is of little importance for me, by contrast, however,
obtaining a variety of levels of perception with a set
theme with different methods, is.
Working on one theme, such as a room which you can
enter or like the relationship to a statue which you walk
around in order to understand it from different perspecti-
ves, corresponds to my concept of the relativity of a
respective applicable truth.
The series and collages made from asphalt, Japanese
watercolours, chalk and printed Japanese paper on
canvas in combination with oils are this, for example. On
the other hand, the less conventional, less intellectually
selected pastels with their lustful colours playing more on
the retina, but also the watercolour paintings which
portray the formal vocabulary of what happens in the
city with more spontaneity and intimacy, with greater
lack of intention. This produces a self-propagating virtuosity
at the point after interruption where the dangerous edge
threatens to become elegance. The more angular and
rougher the collage, the more playful the arrangement
of the unhoped for which is again the suitable means for
countering one’s own stylistic habits.
The circle closes again sometime. The theme has worked
itself out and emptied the current thinking and emotional
situation. Lived out, just as relationships to locations, things
and to an idea can be exhausted.
A new space can be opened, a new theme with the
same intensity and exclusivity can be lived. The old one
closes and remains a lived past like a painted diary which
is in the form of pictures.
Frank Rödel, 1997