Space Spy

Construction and Dissolution

Cologne based painter Heiner Blumenthal will show his recent paintings and works on paper

at RAUMX  from 15th until 23rd of May.

Private View Thursday 14th of May

from 6.00pm

Open Saturday – Sundays 2 – 6pm

and by appointment – T 020 7267 6267

Lines and surfaces, like racks in flat space. These are constructions, whose purpose lies in themselves alone. But with the exacting necessity of architectural plans. The paintings immediately become part of the room and the wall they hang on. In a way, as if they had always been there, or as if they had been made for the room. They behave like silhouettes or shadows in the room. They have no system and no order underlying them. There are no preliminary models, no studies. Rather, they are themselves studies for possibilities of paintings. This fact of being possible, of balancing out, always remains inherent to them, even when they have been completed as paintings.

The painted lines, spots, runs, edges, the bleeding of the paint, binding agents and painting means come about slowly, abruptly, over highly differing periods of time. Corrections, places that had first been taped, and places that have been painted over are visible. The colors slowly emerge from the lines. Earlier on, these were always very restrained, but in the meantime they are clearer and in terms of color, more defined as individual surfaces. The lines and surfaces end at the edge of the painting, or extend beyond it. The edge becomes the painting border only after it has been stretched over the frame. The surfaces hang in the rack or extend the lines to the painting’s edge.

The complete origin of the painting and all of its material are visible. Everything is immediate and direct. What is not visible is the trace of the painter. No self-expression. No expressivity. It is rather a mechanics of feeling. The paintings are about control and loss of control.

Ultimately the paintings look as though precisely this one could only look like this. As though it is a necessity. And as though as a contradiction of itself, it still bears all its inherent possibilities. The painting is a possible and necessary design at the same time.

Stefan Baumkötter

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