Rudolf Stingel:

Vineyard Paintings

Not much light, foliage, a meadow in front of a forest. Spots, outlines, green on blue. The blurring of the introductory photograph in this feature already points to the fragile ambivalence of the images in this series of pictures. The paintings are obviously the result of a process of quaint gestures, without losing the sublimity of painting. Equally, it’s tempting to interpret this as a result of a mimetic action—a reproduction of vegetal forms like bark or crust.

But there can be no doubt that these are abstract images, not even abstractions. The three ingredients of this process are tulle, a fabric that is actually used for costumes, like the tulle skirt of Degas’s little dancer. But here it becomes the trace of a curtain, a gauze that has been pushed aside, revealing the layer underneath: a rich green. I am familiar with this green as a background in medieval portraits by Holbein, Cranach, and Memling. And then the gold, which forms the third and final layer, is reminiscent of courtly damask, of the woven, heavy robes that were common at the time of Henry VIII. The almost fluorescent green and the gold from the can, which may be somewhat striking in a different context, mingle to create a majestic, old-masterly picture pane that is broken up by the gauze. Yet “broken up” is too muscular a word, because the care and embrace of chance result in a delicate pictorial space, without creating seductive effects. Neither the green nor the tulle suggest glamour. Even the gold seems trivial when compared to the gold of altars. 

The true marrow of these pictures, however, is not this ambivalent chord of color—even if those elements sing of somewhat feudal memory—but the complex traces, tears, furrows, and lines that are joined by the impression of the gauze to form a suite of powerful drawings. The central gesture in these paintings is that of pulling away, on which the entire structuring of the surface is based. Absence is in fact the impression that arises when looking at them. Reading the surface does not lead to a symbolic interpretation, and even if the color palette evokes a historical grandeur, the masterful splendor remains an unfulfilled promise.