The Trouble with Painting
The Renaissance distinguished between two groups of fundamentally different bodies, which were considered opposites in reality and in art. On the one hand, there were those with clearly defined surfaces and volumes, on the other hand there were those which appeared shapeless and insubstantial. Of course, this notion was actually also based on the fact that the dome of a cathedral could even then be exactly calculated, in conrtrast to the clouds behind them. In the meantime, fractal geometry has clarified that actually there is no fundamental difference between the two, but that their consistency only has to be described differently. This insight does not imply, however, that the clear outline of the dome no longer dominates our perception, as the indistinct shape of a cloud seems incomprehensible and therefore less important.
The sixteen prints of the Janus series by Pedro Boese address exactly this reflex of conditioned perception. In some of them the fact that they present white dots arranged in a square on a black background can only be surmised, because they are part of a group obviously based on the same creative principle. Actually, the majority of prints do not only consist of rows and lines of dots in different stages of dissolution, but the formal integrity of these dots is strongly disturbed, too. In Boese ́s works, circle and rectangle, both shapes of great symmetry, are in a state of crisis. They were pushed from the clear geometry of two-dimensionality into the complicated world of fractals by means of a simple mechanical intervention. Chaos replaces repetition obeying the laws of spatial geometry and opens the door to the ambiguity of the physiology of perception. Foreground and background suddenly appear on the same pictorial level because the whiteness of the paper, pushing through the gaps of the disrupted structures, makes motif and space appear as one. This is how the eye is forced to perform the difficult task of accepting something that exists a priori as something real rather than taking it for granted and therefore disregarding it. In other words: The viewer realises that the invisible is of vital importance for the constitu- tion of the visible; that actually both can only exist together.
The new disorder in Pedro Boese ́s works arouses the question of what impact these pictorial entropies have in his strictly structured, formal pictorial world. This is especially true since the artist has for some time now confined his work to a limited vocabulary of discs in various colours which he relates to a vertical and a horizontal axis in changing rhythmic variations by means or mechanical devices such as punches or stencils. This is how lines and chessboards, complete grids and those which barely offer an idea of the underlying pattern develop. By now the lucid application of paint and the simple, distinc- tive shapes which were characteristic of his earlier canvases has been replaced by stencils of a more striking, flashier colour range. The viewer is now faced with the adventure of complementary colour contrasts rather than with the individual handwriting of brush strokes. In addition to the stimulating suggestive power of his colours, Boese confronts his serial works and their strict divisions with an element of softly employed gestures of destruction. Here again, the artist ́s playful way of dealing with rationalist traditions of abstract paining is demonstrated.
Actually, the avantgardes of the 20th century have a long tradition of violence – as a manifestation of principles as well as an aesthetic principle. Through them, a new theatrical dimension is introduced into art, a dimension which opens art to conceptual dimensions of meaning which are independent from the motif. Since the late 1960s at the latest all art – according to Duchamp – is considered conceptual. However, painting (and classic sculpture) were by definition excluded from this, as it is taken for granted that by using a medium an artist accepts its traditions, as well, and is therefore biased.1 If one follows this logic, all presentday paintings can actually only be sentimental, melancholic or ironical simulations of paintings, as the tradition of painting came to an end with the appearance of the first empty canvases. A great number of paintings being created through various methods of appropriation or quotation is indeed meant to indicate just that. But on closer examination, one will quickly realise that the subtly polished and scraped surfaces of Pedro Boese ́s paintings deal less with a distance from but rather a strong affinity to painting and the struggle to inscribe new dimensions into the two-dimensional surface. In this respect the physical exertion which is connected with the operation on the plates can be interpreted as the psychologically motivated attempt to withdraw from the grip of history. After all, it did not only generate the laws of painting but also the principle of the avantgardes, that is the notion that the human beings are able to re-invent themselves time and again and that artists are even obliged to do so. People used to hope desperately for a change of our organs of perception to transform the suffering from constant change, from the ambivalences of modernity, into pleasure. But this was not to be. As a presentday artist, one cannot help but accept the challenge of suspecting that everything could always be totally different. That is what Pedro Boese is doing in his new works, with their deeprooted contradictions of order and chaos.
Susanne Prinz
Translation by Sabine Kranz
1 Joseph Kosuth, Art after Philosophy, 1992, S.844
Vera Hilger, moderne Landschaftsmalerei zeitgenössische Malerei