New York – (From the opening of the exhibition Berlin-New York in the BHF-BANK Main Branch
in Berlin on 10/05/2001, Berlin)
… Again and again, Frank Rödel puts motifs from New York
and Berlin in mostly square but different size formats over
and next to each other, collage style, where, of course,
horizontal and vertical rows of elements of the same size
appear, but without completely defining the image. The
straight edged borders, on the other hand, are often disrupted
or covered by curves and silhouettes of buildings or they
appear in front of the background. However, in all of this
we recognise typical motifs – the Empire State Building, the
Statue of Liberty, the American flag, Potsdamer Platz or the
Quadriga; but these are not tourist postcard views, as you
can imagine. I am even certain they would have to wait a
while at kiosks. But this is always about very extraordinary
perspectives, formed from unexpected and awkward angles.
It is a play between documentary truth and confusing
alienation, right up to abstraction. Empty spaces appear
and colours far removed from the original.
From this, the overall impression can be – not exactly determined
– but described. And the fact that I have to explain
it here is a feature of this impression. This is naturally due to
the fact that these images are not at all static. They are
always jumps from one partial motif to another, from the tin
red silhouette of the “Gate Towers” at the Potsdamer Platz
to small, dark panoramas on postage stamps, from the head
of the Statue of Liberty across a piece of flag to a bridge
seen from below. Lautréamont said of art that it exists in the
accidental encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella
on an operating table, i.e. around the sparks caused by the
encounter of inequalities – and despite this the works remain
about the respective theme. On the other hand: the mostly
large format of the motifs prevents impatience. The images
do not avoid the monumental and the representative.
Again and again, graphics appear, recorded from the line,
next to what has been painted, where the surface is important.
All of this flashes like in a film; but not after each
other like in a film. Instead they are next to and on top of
each other, sometimes even across each other. And gaudiness
of the present contrasts with the pathos and tasteful
Patina
Time lives in these images. They excite, pull you along and
despite this they offer you a strange distance, a kind of
melancholy.
But unbridled hope and expectation for an unburdened
future and expansion has always been placed on America
(and especially on New York). Certainly, after two hundred
years of history, America has also had its own traumas; yet
the gaze towards the future is stronger than ever. And the
Statue of Liberty is a promise.
In Frank Rödel’s images we see the Quadriga of the Brandenburg
Gate as the Statue of Liberty. You just have to
compare its unbroken symbolic power with that of the
Quadriga of the Brandenburg Gate, which has been damaged
several times, redesigned, taken down, converted, in
order to make the opposition clear. Here constant interruption,
there an unquestioning certainty in a linear and expansive
development. Our monuments are simultaneously witnesses
and objects of a world court that they have outlived,
but we can not add to them: temporarily. We can no longer
look up to them without interruption and they appear to
say, with Rilke, “Who speaks of victory? Survival is everything.”
And the carefully looked after ruins of the tower of the
Memorial Church appear to have anticipated the title of
an installation by Joseph Beuys:“Show your dignity.”
If Frank Rödel’s Berlin and New York motifs connect, this
should be understood merely as proof of the parallels and
highpoints but as a taut dichotomy – very much in line with
modern art. And what appears there as a triumph makes
time and the present appear like a storm moving across
everything. Past and present have created a great deal,
but ultimately they left it to us and other things will leave us
behind…
Wilhelm Gauger 2003