“The wick of time has been screwed down here.”
Work on the Mount Athos impressively characterises this sensual
perception of Erhart Kästner’s of the atmosphere on the Mount Athos
which Kästner toured in the mid-1950s in two longer stays. Almost
30 years later, Frank Rödel climbed Athos for the first time.
He was fascinated by the seclusion of life there which inspired
the foreigner to reflect on his own world and values. Frank
Rödel made three trips to Mount Athos in 1983, 1996 and
1998, which is located to the south-east of Thessalonica on
the Chalkidiki peninsular and which forms one of three ridges.
It concludes in Mount Athos, which is 2033 m high, after
which the entire 50 km long and 5-10 km ridge is named.
Athos, called “Holy Mountain” (Greek: Agion Oros) by the
Greeks, represents a self-administered region within Greece
which has been the centre of Orthodox monks for more
than 1000 years.
Frank Rödel visited a total of fifteen of the twenty larger
monasteries – with permission to stay (Greek: Diamoneterion)
for four days each. The strict regulation of visitor numbers
to the Holy Mountain, according to which a maximum of 10
non-Orthodox people can stay for four days each, is certainly
one factor for the “survival” of this monastic society, as far
removed as possible from the “profane” world.
Starting at the foot of Athos, Frank Rödel not only enjoyed
the beauty of this region, he also got an insight into life on
Athos through talking and watching. At the same time, the
centuries old monastic architecture and wall paintings in
the churches and refectories showed him the importance
of the Holy Mountain for art history.
Without discussing the history further, it must be said that the
Athos monkdom has survived an extremely variable history.
Bloody periods with numerous new monasteries were always
followed by times of external attacks, plundering, destruction
and reconstruction right into the 20th century. Frank Rödel
does not approach Athos from historical or art historical
perspectives even though he includes historical artefacts
such as book covers and illustrations in manuscripts in his
later works. Instead, the artist displays the events and experiences
on Athos artistically and individually. His representations
are not impressions with examples and locations which
can be discovered but are thinking, associative walks.
Rödel chooses the collage principle for the pictorial representation
of these dichotomies – after Max Ernst, who Rödel
cites in his own catalogue, “the systematic exploitation of
the incidental but artistically provoked encounter of two or
more opposing realities at an apparently suitable level –
and the spark of poetry which jumps the gap as these realities
approach.” In contrast to Max Ernst, Frank Rödel combines
related rather than opposite elements: alongside fragments
of scripture in Greek lettering and greatly enlarged linear
hand drawings, there are reprinted views of monasteries,
and representations of Byzantine and post-Byzantine artefacts
and manuscripts.
Rödel chose various Christian motifs, such as the crucifixion,
scenes from the life of Christ and from illuminations from an
anthology from the Iviron monastery from the extensive
pictorial material of the catalogue. The objects, the selection
of which was motivated by the senses and which was carried
out according to aesthetics, for the artist Rödel became
ciphers of history and the past as cultural products of the
Holy Mountain. He presents this temporal dimension in the
form of unwritten, confused pages which have been stuck
in an arrangement resembling stairs, the history of the organic
to one side. In the background of the representations, there
are abstract landscape elements – either highlighting the
composition as thin glaze or supporting the composition in
broad bands and curves. What was hinted at in the first
series becomes a certainty in the second: Frank Rödel’s
works of Mount Athos are representations of subjective
sensations in which nature and culture are combined associatively.
Furthermore, there is the pictorial representation
of concrete impressions – such as the liturgical songs, where
the monks enter into a dialogue in front of and behind the
icons. In Rödel’s works, this change is expressed in the
layering of different motifs corresponding through the transparency
of the picture medium.
Kerstin Englert 2000