NO. 5 - UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2010 - BRUNO INGEMANN
----------------------------------------------------------------
Painting Memory
Introduction
 

Filling one square meter with acrylic paint takes time and from one point of view it can be seen as the production of a picture to be hanged on a wall.
But the painting process is also a way of slowing down the time of looking and remembering in order to gain and investigate new experiences and insights. The painting process directs attention. And without focused attention it becomes impossible to produce this kind of painting.

By framing the intention with the painting, the painting as the final product only reveals part of the epistemological process that is taking place in time and space. In another context I have named this framing The TransVisual meaning construction: looking into the mediated world and the visual event in order to give attention and power to the selected material or situation and reveal more than the referential potential and open up for situated and cognitive experiences. The following four themes are constructed as the filter to deduce the selection of the presented paintings. From more than 130 paintings these 32 images are selected and grouped in the four themes. Each contains eight paintings.

THEME 1: An analytical visual transformation of family photographs from the 1950s related to the present.
THEME 2: A visual analysis of the full-page cartoon called ‘Willy’s Adventures’ from the 1930s seen with the eye of the 2000s.      
THEME 3: Parts and whole. The narration of incongruent and diverse objects and signs and their relation to the whole.
THEME 4: Moving pictures, moving elements and moving viewer. An investigation of the seen and the unseen.

 

THEME 1: An analytical visual transformation of family photographs from the 1950s related to the present.

Very few family snapshots have survived from my early childhood. One is a snapshot of my often-absent father lying on the grass in a park on a summer day holding the less than a year old boy close to him.
The second snapshot is taken in the street of a small village in front of the dairy. I am holding a basket in one arm standing with short trousers, naked knees and a sharp parting. The shadow of the houses on the opposite side of the street looks sharp, bold and dangerous to me.
The third photo is of a boys’ choir in their uniforms standing in front of the church where they are going to sing. The boy has a strong feeling of belonging and closeness. We are in it together.
The three photos are looked at with great attention from today’s perspective, and as the brush touches the canvas more is revealed about the situation then and the feelings around the present and absent persons on the snaps.

Titles of the eight paintings in theme 1:
• Father and Son 1946: The young father of 23 and the only 10-month-old son are looking at you. What is hidden and what is revealed? (81 x 110 cm).
• The Hidden Secrets: Looking, looking, looking - holding so close and so distant. (81 x 122 cm).
• Hold me touch me: The son’s hand holding so tight the arm of his father. Trying to avoid him disappearing. The Ankh symbol denotes eternal life. (81 x 110 cm).
• The Dangerous House: The little boy is safe in his warm box. The dangerous shadow is getting closer. (81 x 110 cm).
• The little Boy: Isolated and multiplied - his loneliness is exposed. (61 x 61 cm).
• Boy behind Father: He sees through his father and hopes to be seen as he is. (61 x 61 cm).
• In the Quietness of the Wood: Through their voices they become united in sound. (81 x 122 cm).
• The energetic choir: Their energy is burning their uniform appearance. (81 x 122 cm).


THEME 2: A visual analysis of the full-page cartoon called ‘Willy’s Adventures’ from the 1930s seen with the eye of the 2000s.

As a teenager the boy found a heap of family magazines from the time when his father was a teenager. Think about it: they were looking at the same cartoons with an interval of 25 years. The father is looking at his son looking with the same intensity as he did once. Maybe.
A snapshot shows the son lying on the grass in a garden with his very new straw-hat. He is reading the cartoon Wills Adventures [‘Rob the rover’]. The son is fascinated and is reading about the main character who has been found drifting around in a boat without any mother or father and without any memory of his past. The painting uses the time-lapse and elements from similar newcomers like the moon landing and timeless signs and perceptions like water, trees and animals to comment upon the loneliness, silence and identity experienced by the teen.

Titles of the eight paintings in theme 2:
• The teenager contained in nature and adventure – expecting the step of mankind. (81 x 122 cm).
• The air is trembling – the sound of the chair that creaks. (81 x 122 cm).
• Old cartoons in yellow family magazines in between dreams of rush away. (81 x 122 cm).
• The structured nature is dangerous – even for Willy. (81 x 122 cm).
• Reality is diffusing, swept away the old cartoons. (81 x 122 cm).
• The boy reading does not hear [The bell ringing]. Willy is trapped. (81 x 122 cm).
• (The tiger roars) – heat, trap, dust, monotony – and sparkling water. (81 x 122 cm).
• The clash of time and a crash at the beach – on the moon ‘A giant step for mankind’. (81 x 122 cm).

 

THEME 3: Parts and whole. The narration of incongruent and diverse objects and signs and their relation to the whole.

Two or more different elements are combined and woven together to create some kind of narrative with a beginning, an end and something in between. In the beginning is a universe of pictures from one or more cultures. They are resemblance of something like ropes, persons, skeletons, birds, text – but they are most of all presentations of identities.
The rope is taken from an exhibition where the famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen’s rope was exhibited. He was afraid of fire and was always travelling around in Europe with his rope so he could escape the tragedy.
The identity of time is explored from the first preserved photo in the world made by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, and related to the mug photo in a passport.
The picture-in-picture explores the original identities and how these are transformed in the new combinations creating narratives. Some of the identities are common knowledge and some are more private and hidden signs.

Titles of the eight paintings in theme 3:
• The rope and the bird meet in history. (81 x 122 cm).
• Identification of the travelling sun and a travelling young man. (81 x 122 cm).
• Listen: Under the sky you are always alone. (81 x 122 cm).
• The skeleton bird and the cliché of the 50s of the ‘other’. (81 x 122 cm).
• Oh, look! Oh, look! Oh, look! (81 x 122 cm).
• The monk is substituted by a new monk producing new knowledge. (81 x 122 cm)• The open gate to heaven for the open-minded. (81 x 122 cm).
• The carved stones in Paris meet the Buddha in Bangkok. (81 x 122 cm).

 

THEME 4: Moving pictures, moving elements and moving viewer. An investigation of the seen and the unseen.

My cartoon hero of the 50s was Hopalong Cassidy. For me he was a dangerous, adventurous and controlling character at the same time. In these paintings Hopalong is woven into the hard rocks, the soft plants as symbols of his attempts to ride and capture the unseen and the dangerous. The sequential pictures explore the moving elements.
The visual structure of numbers, plants, web, excavation grids and x’es are trying to catch the falling people in a way that maintains and brings their mystery under control and makes them homier.

Titles of the eight paintings in theme 4:
• Caught up in rigid structure: can Hopalong overtake himself? (81 x 122 cm).
• The structure of the sweet honeydew melon overwhelms the symbol of man. (81 x 122 cm).
• The hard rock and the tough interpreter of law. (81 x 122 cm).
• Numbers, numbers, shadows and doubles are falling. (81 x 122 cm).
• Hopalong is vanishing in the plants of water. (81 x 122 cm).
• The excavation of the Frank Capa photo from Spain 1936 meets Shakespeare’s ‘No nothing is what is not’. (81 x 122 cm).The grid catches the never dying falling woman. (81 x 122 cm).x one, xx two, xxx three, xxxx … who is going to shuffle the cards? (81 x 81 cm).

----------------------------------------------------------------