EASTER SPECIAL 3/3

“Painting Today” by Tony Godfrey opens on page 304 and Daniel Richter – yet another old favourite whom I did not consider sufficiently close to what I am doing to refer to here… until now.

Daniel Richter (b. 1962, Germany)
Punktum, 2003

My first encounter with Richter’s work was some years ago at his solo show in Vienna. It was prior to my dedicated hands-on engagement with art, and at that time I rarely responded well to paintings. But this show had left me gaping, the reaction was visceral.

What I remember most, however, was something he said in a video interview that was screened at the museum. Loosely recalled it was something like “style is something that used to be a method, but has become a bad habit”. That has definitely made a lasting impression and clearly informed my practice that so far has been trying to defy any attempt to streamlining and definition on other than very high level of abstraction.

I don’t know what to make of Punktum exactly. The title is quite literal, obviously referring to Barthian concept of a personally touching element in a photograph that generates meaning and engagement in an idiosyncratic, intuitive, nearly visceral way. And there is this incongruent ghostly white figure in the crowd attracting both the viewer’s and the depicted audience’s attention. Is it something religious, is it something hallucinatory, is it a show? An ironic video to song I_$uss by rock band Leningrad comes to my mind, depicting a girl experiencing religious epiphany under influence of party drugs at the disco. Or is it Velasquez-kind of perspective play, placing the viewer on par with those depicted, blurring the line between art and life? Or is it about vision as such – channeling of connection through projection of idiosyncratic meanings onto visually identified “punctum”?

It appeals to me that I cannot just “read” it, while nevertheless getting a number of thoughts and associations triggered. That’s how I try to form my works as well.

“I believe in the richness and beauty of the human intellect and in its ability to understand the unknown and strange. … Beauty through confusion; truth through collision!” And yes, that’s what I am aiming for, too. To confuse in a beautiful and productive way. Only that I don’t expect to generate any truth, at least not in singular.