Norbert Schwontkowski (b. 1949, Germany – d. 2013)
Zahl, 1988

Kunsmuseum Bonn, Germany / Visited 23/01/2020

Schwontkowski’s paintings may seem deceivingly simple – limited colour range, isolated figures in the foreground surrounded by rather monochrome background. But they do trigger a whole range of thoughts as well as emotional responses in me. There is melancholy and wit, attention to detail and readiness to reinterpret the visible.

For our purposes here I picked this particular painting on the basis of its formal qualities. In it I recognise myself doing my dotted painting. Initially trying to get them rather uniform, then failing, then embracing the involuntary variety, then starting to play with it in more deliberate manner, at some point starting to count – hey, how many have I already done and how many are left… Of course, this progression most likely has nothing to do with Schwontkowski’s process, but this paintings superficial resemblance resonates with me. And there is some interesting metamorphosis going on between a numeral as a culturally coded sign and numeral as a visual form, where these interpretations follow different trajectories of thought, only at some point once again to intersect in a conclusion “big”… somewhere along the road I start re-intepreting my own painting in the light of this one, finding a whole lot of new perspectives…