Courtesy of Studio Armin Böhm © Gunter Lepkowski
Armin Boehm
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"World of Confusion"
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170 x 220 cm, Ölfarbe und Stoffe auf Leinwand, 2019
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From a bird's eye view and over the silhouette of the artist's body we approach the pictorial world of Armin Boehm: He seems to be floating around the world, first in an easterly direction, past the skyline of Shanghai, then through a film scenery of a small American town idyll flooded with neon spotlights, until we reach Gräfwinkel, the epitome of German backwardness, as well as his home town. The meeting point at the end of the journey is the Berghain, a microcosm of Berlin's dance culture with a paradisiacally tolerant atmosphere. With one hand on the DJ's desk, "entertains" the artist's self-image which is placed in the centre of the picture. As it were, with the brush in the other hand, visualizes, provokes, creates or destroys it. And not only the outer, visible world. The self-portrait also provides a view of the artist's inner world: from a nebulous body space held up by a skeleton of fishbones and mechanical construction parts, the motifs that create the artist's identity as an EU citizen, such as family, nature and progress in medicine and technology, emerge. In a subtle, translucent formal language reminiscent of the gentle border-extending artistic gestures within a propaganda formalism - as once in Walter Womacka's representative painting "When Socialists Dream" - the self-image suggests visionary ideas. For the first time so present in the picture, the artistic self-portrait is a symbol of the conviction of art as a unifying and communicative force, especially of painting and through the artist as mediator.
"The artist has dealt with the multiform world (...), I would like to compare this multi-branched and ramified order with the root system of the tree. That is why the sap flows to the artist to pass through him and through his eye. Thus he stands in the place of the trunk. (...) And (the artist) does nothing else at the place assigned to him at the trunk but to collect and pass on what comes from the depths. Neither serving nor ruling, only mediating. So he takes up a truly humble position. And the beauty of the crown is not himself, it has only passed through him.“
Boehm's painted picture worlds, which are created from several realities and thus (via) a personal, simultaneously designed picture world peppered with media images, also address serious, current socio-critical topics, are a breeding ground for enriching knowledge, expanding consciousness, a change of perspective. A changed process of seeing is also brought about by Boehm's formal language: Numerous human figures with multiple faces attract attention through an obvious narrative. On the level of design, a second, contemplative gaze is called for, which allows us to observe an interplay of materials on the picture carrier via a fleeting illusionist moment. This ambivalence of the surface, which is striking for Boehm's work, results from a sensitive handling and a precise collage-like application of remnants of fabric to areas of colour. This emphasis on the surface through a double materiality and demarcation, coupled with the omnipresence of the human heads split into the surface, makes one think of the Cubist portraits of Pablo Picasso, while the collage-like surface design of the canvas can be understood as an extension or overcoming of traditional pictorial forms in the Dadaist sense.
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A unique added value of this exciting play of materials in Boehm's painting can be discovered in the sensitization of the eye to a shift in the process of perception: in the search for differentiated forms on the canvas, the gaze shifts to the details, to the structural differences of the picture. The perspective is reversed: from the figure and the narrative to an abstract view from the fragment to the whole. This perspective in turn leads back to the legibility and significance of the picture: the artist's picture offers the
The viewer takes up an individual position, with a suggestive power for reflection on oneself and on the individual as a starting point for an approach and a mutual global understanding in the currently turbulent world events. His self-portrait is a door-opener into his pictorial world and at the same time a bridging, an empathic gesture through which the primal longings of mankind are revealed far from cultural and ideological differences.
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Daniela von Damaros
(August 2019)
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Courtesy of Studio Armin Böhm © Daniela von Damaros
Space 2, 2020, courtesy of the artist, photo by jjimage
Jonny Star
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Space 1 - 6, 2020
100 x 135 x 10 cm each, Pigment print on fabric, fabric, Swarovski beads, wool
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"Against the tide"
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Jonny Star's new wall hangings entitled Space look like stills from a surreal film scene. They show human bodies and Koi fish moving together through a white room and seemingly out of its center to the surface. What becomes visible to us as a result appears frozen despite the dynamics of the body gestures. Dreamlike lightness is contrasted here with heaviness.
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With the help of digital collage, the artist creates these surreal motifs. Photographic templates are fragmented, colored and recomposed. The motif is transferred to fabric and experiences an additional material heaviness through embroidery. The Swarovski-beads used and the patterned fabric framing the motif put the image under additional tension through their function as compositional elements. Fabric and pearls correspond in their fleshy red colouring and bring the wall hangings to us through their shine and patterns with a light, playful aesthetic. Shimmering, merging colours, some of which extend beyond the contours, direct our attention to the gestures of the protagonists. Do they suggest points of contact with the outside? Do they blur the border between image space and exterior space?
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In the dissolution of the picture surface, Star offers us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a foreign world of experience. Similar to an aquarium, which allows an insight and freedom of movement, but also lets us experience a limitation through physical gestures and touches. Here, transparency and openness seem to go hand in hand with vulnerability and restriction. Lightness and heaviness of the artistic means of expression evoke symbols of freedom and compulsion, vision and memory, dream and trauma.
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The interplay between man and Koi carp associates the important role of the animals in Japanese culture. According to tradition, Koi, the so-called "Nishikigoi", are a symbol of strength, endurance and courage because of their powerful nature, stamina and their ability to swim against the tide. According to legend, they are the only animals that can cross the "Yellow River". Then they transform into a dragon, which stands for luck, success and wealth. Children are still given "Koinobori", so-called "Wind-Koi", on their way of life and thus symbolically represent the values of the Kois. These convey the vision of a happy and free life, but also point to goals that are in line with those of today's capitalist system.
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Are we in the right place, in this aquarium full of Koi fish? Are the values of success and wealth also our values? Or do the powers and abilities of the Koi encourage us to rethink the values of the system we live in and to direct them to our inner needs? With her new work Space, Jonny Star impressively and playfully reveals what it can mean to allow a change of perspective: To live dreams and possibly encounter trauma.
Daniela von Damaros
(July 2020)
Space 1, 2020, courtesy of the artist, photo by jjimage
ZURAG 200711 by OTGO 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 400 cm; Courtesy of © Studio OTGO
Otgonbayar Ershuu
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The suspension of space and time
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In the paintings of the Mongolian artist Otgonbayar Ershuu (Otgo), the viewer is immersed in an endless sea of figures, meticulously painted animals, people and flowers. Sometimes the artist works - in stages - over several years on a painting and creates this unique material and motivic density by repeating and overlapping the figures. His paintings enfold the viewer with their atmosphere, reminding him of the ornamental richness of the architecture of the Orient. The luminous acrylic colors and the composition in turn give the figures a dynamic that makes them begin to flow, like in the six and a half meter long painting INFINITE. Seen from a distance and from a bird's eye view, they move over a landscape as if they were a river, and even run beyond the canvas...
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Movement plays an essential role in the artistic work of Otgo. It serves as a symbol for the transience of the material world and the exposure of its constant transformation. The artist experienced the meaning of transience and the power inherent in destruction at the latest during his training with a Tanghka master. He learned to destroy his own just finished paintings. It is a Buddhist exercise to let go of the material world and to be in the moment, to practice concentration, to lower the ego and thus to purify the mind. The mandalas of Buddhist monks are created in this awareness. And so do the paintings of Otgo. Everything that happens during the working process in the studio, the artist says, has an influence on his painting. Constant silent companions of this process - or even totems - are relics of Mongolian nomads, which the artist keeps in his spacious studio. These are, for example, a roof wreath and a scissor grid wall of a so-called yurt, the tent of Mongolian nomads. Compared with their way of life of permanent migration, many of Otgo's works also undergo constant changes in the form of continuation and overpainting - sometimes months or years later - which often makes the original version unrecognizable.
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ZURAG 200711, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 400 cm; Courtesy of © Studio OTGO
The artist, however, remains true to miniature painting. The 600 miniaturized Thangka paintings that Otgo has produced to date, which characterize him as a master of this Buddhist pictorial tradition, he seemingly now brings to one canvas, as his painting formats are now taking on remarkable proportions.
In the abundance of subjects, the horse is particularly common. This is hardly surprising, since a proverb says "A Mongol without a horse is like a bird without wings". In the land of horsemanship, children learned to ride even before they could walk. In the almost two-meter-long work ZURAG 200607, the viewer perceives a blue carpet of horses, which - sometimes more and sometimes less densely "woven" - lies like a mist over a mountainous landscape illuminated by the setting sun. The painting ZURAG 200606, which is currently still in the process of being painted, is interspersed with the motif of the zebra. For the artist, the zebra as a wild horse is a symbol of man's powerlessness to tame the animal, which lasts as long as he sees the animal as a horse and not as the wild being that it actually is.
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The essential theme of movement is most clearly brought to the viewer's attention in the four-meter-long painting ZURAG 200711. Human bodies in free fall can be seen, which occasionally find support on a scaffolding of traces of paint. The characteristic density of the pictorial motifs is loosened up here, thus simultaneously opening up the view into the pictorial space. The figures seem to lose themselves in the infinity of dark blue or dissolve into pure color as an expression of energy.
Daniela von Damaros
(September 2020)
INFINITE – 16 by OTGO, 2013 – 2020, Acryl auf Leinwand , 213 x 650 cm; Courtesy of Studio OTGO © Daniela von Damaros
Aus der Dunkelheit geboren
Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auf der Tiefe;
[…] Es lasse die Erde aufgehen Gras und Kraut, das sich besame, und fruchtbare Bäume, da ein jeglicher nach seiner Art Frucht trage und habe seinen eigenen Samen bei sich selbst auf Erden.
[…] Es errege sich das Wasser mit webenden und lebendigen Tieren, und Gevögel fliege auf Erden unter der Feste des Himmels.
(1 Mose, Gen 1,2.11.20)
Der Entstehungsprozess des überdimensional großen Gemäldes ZURAG 63 lässt an die biblische Schöpfungsgeschichte denken, mit der Erschaffung der Erde, des Himmels, der Meere, der Länder und allen Lebewesen. Auf sechs Metern Länge hat der in der Mongolei geborene und in Berlin lebende Künstler Otgonbayar Ershuu (Otgo) in Zyklen und über zwei Jahre (2017-2018) hinweg dieses bildnerische Paradies geschaffen. Der Künstler nimmt uns nun mit auf eine Reise durch seinen künstlerischen Kosmos, um einen Einblick in die Genesis dieses Gemäldes zu gewinnen...
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... aus der Dunkelheit - der Grundierung der Leinwand mit Karbonschwarz - erwacht in ZURAG 63 ein lichtdurchflutetes Paradies. Die Lichtquelle und fruchtbare Saat ist hier die Farbe, mit deren Hilfe die gestalterischen Elemente auf dem Bildträger zu „keimen“ beginnen: Grün für die Pflanzen, Blau für das Wasser, Rot für die Früchte und Gelb für die wärmespendende Energie der Sonne. Diese in luftig-lockeren Schichten aufgetragenen Farben sind wie ein Nährboden für die unendliche Vielzahl von figurativen Formen, die später auf der Bildfläche entstehen. Würde man eine dieser Farbschichten als Momentaufnahme einfrieren und wieder aufdecken, dann erschiene eine Malfläche, die an eines der Seerosengemälde von Monet erinnert.
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[…] Laßt uns Menschen machen, ein Bild, das uns gleich sei, die da herrschen über die Fische im Meer und über die Vögel unter dem Himmel und über das Vieh und über die ganze Erde und über alles Gewürm, das auf Erden kriecht.
(1 Mose, Gen 1,26)
Bevor der Malgrund des Gemäldes „bewohnt“ wird, ziehen die Jahreszeiten und Naturgewalten durch das Bild. Der Künstler versinnbildlicht dies durch die Wahl der Farben und der Technik des Farbauftrags. Otgo beträufelt die Leinwand immer wieder mit wässriger Acrylfarbe. Monsuunartig überströmt ein Blau das Bild und lässt Formen untergehen und im nächsten Moment neue erblühen. Ein zyklisches Werden und Vergehen schreibt sich mittels Spuren des Ausspülens und Überlagerns von Formen und Farben in die Leinwand ein. So wie der Künstler einst von seinem Meister gelehrt wurde, seine aufwendig und minutiös gemalten Tangka-Malereien sofort nach der Fertigstellung wieder zu zerstören, durchläuft der Künstler dieses Prinzip nun wieder und wieder und bereits während des langen Arbeitsprozesses an diesem Gemälde.
Mit der Zeit lagern sich die zahlreichen Farbschichten wie in einer geologische Formation auf dem Bildträger ab und formen allmählich eine Landschaft, mit einem Flusslauf, Bergen und Tälern. Das Bild gewinnt an Perspektive und offenbart einen Blick in die Tiefe, durch die Lianen des Farbdschungels hindurch.
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Und Gott schuf den Menschen ihm zum Bilde, zum Bilde Gottes schuf er ihn; und schuf sie einen Mann und ein Weib.
(1 Mose, Gen 1,27)
Was sich nun nach und nach aus der Tiefe des Dschungels dem Betrachters zeigt, sind präzis gemalte Motive wie Blumenblüten, Pflanzen, Tiere, und menschliche Figuren. Letztere tummeln sich in energetischen Strömen und – aus der Nähe betrachtet - tänzelnd, fallend, reitend, schwimmend oder schwebend durch das Dickicht der Farbe und über den gesamten Bildträger. Sie finden sich dabei in einer friedlichen Gesellschaft von Pelikanen, Pferden und Wildkatzen wieder. Die androgyn gestalteten Körper der menschlichen Figuren erfahren erst spät durch die zeichnerische Hand des Künstlers eine Geschlechterdifferenzierung. Manche Wesen bleiben sogar geschlechterlos oder verschmelzen in der Struktur ihres Inkarnats mit dem Fell der Tiere.
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Hier lässt sich ein Zeitgeist von Genderdebatten und Umweltschutz ablesen, oder ein neuartiger Blick auf den Menschen, ja auf alle Lebewesen. Der Künstler fokussiert das Menschliche, das Ursprüngliche und Wesenhafte an, und geht zu jenem Ursprungsbild zurück, das eine Verbindung zwischen allen Lebewesen offenbart. Vor diesem Hintergrund können Vers 26 und 27 der Genesis kritisch gelesen werden.
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Es werde Licht! und es ward Licht.
(1 Mose, Gen 1,3)
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Die Reise durch den bildnerischen Kosmos OTgos führte den Betrachter aus der Dunkelheit in eine Fülle, in ein wohlig warmes Meer aus Formen und Farben. Die Reise verhilft jedoch auch zu der antagonistischen Erkenntnis, dass es bei solch einer Fülle schier unmöglich ist, jemals alles zu sehen. Es ist eine Reise, die niemals enden wird...
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Daniela von Damaros
