Texte zur Arbeit

von

Stephan Berg

Hans Gercke

Christoph Bauer

Christoph Bauer: Agaves of all things!

On a new series of panel paintings by Thomas Kitzinger Agaves of all things! One of those plants which spends years slowly deteriorating in offices, noticed by nobody! Such was the comment of an acquaintance when I told him that the artist whose work I was interested in had taken agaves as his preferred motif for the last two years and had made them into a series, as he was wont to do with the subjects he addresses. The next time I walked through the offices of a city hall I did indeed notice all those "office plants" to which I would otherwise have hardly paid attention. There they stood, most of them looked sad, forgotten, covered in dust, mostly in poor soil and with damaged laves. Truly invisible!

In Thomas Kitzinger's pictures, by contrast, the emphasis is on visibility. Likewise in his new works the motif catches the eye with such sharp intensity that Stephan Berg has termed the pictures "almost merciless". (1)

One might thus initially assume that the artist himself has a great interest in the plants. Is Thomas Kitzinger a nature painter who really wants to appropriate his subject matter? The answer must be no. Although Kitzinger approaches his motif with such accuracy that we get the impression we are seeing an agave for the first time, we swiftly notice that something is not quite right. And if we study the picture we still do not get any closer to deciding what the object is. A wide gap remains between the object and the representation. The panel emerges in defiance of its objective appearance as a hermetic construction.

So what does Kitzinger show us in his agave pictures? How does he proceed? In recent years, Kitzinger has only painted single objects or rows of objects. He extricates these completely, or in sections, from their environment and presents them as isolated objects in front of neutral or sometimes a contrasting background so that the viewer can discern neither a pictorial field nor a signifying context or an attendant context. In the case of the agaves your attention is repeatedly drawn deep down into the leaf node of the rosette – to the exclusion of the background. Here the totality of the object reigns, alone. Apparently, the painter is attempting to grasp his object as precisely as possible in painterly and visual terms: the shape and curve of the leaves, the way they reach out, the colored appearance and smoothness of each individual leaf.

Add to this the bewildering interplay of light and shadow. Some parts lie in bright light with others in deep shadow, without a recognizable source or origin of light. Seemingly the track of the light follows less the natural laws of light and spatial conditions than it serves the composition and highlights or conceals individual sections. This is at times reminiscent of "frozen" film stills. In any case, Kitzinger's use of light increases the artificiality of his panels.

The object which was at first so familiar to the viewer increasingly seals itself off. It becomes increasingly alien. A harmless office plant becomes an object from whose skin our gaze recoils. No, these plants are not individuals. The choice of title already foregrounds the serial aspect of the works and the attendant dialectic as opposed to our memory of plants. The constant repetition of the motif which in itself warrants a more thorough appropriation and inspection intensifies the impression here that any such effort by us would be futile. "The more often the same objects appear in these pictures, ... the less you believe their apparent realism. (2)

For Thomas Kitzinger the agave, like other objects is a template, indeed a pretext with which he visualizes the problem of appropriation and visibility. Kitzinger admittedly does not select his specific objects as prototypes without reason. In the case of the agave, his approach is reinforced by the flowing movements, turns and arches of the leaves as well as their great opulence (which Kitzinger describes as an "erotic moment". (3)

They offer added value compared with the static bottles, vases, mugs and plates of recent years. Yet ultimately Kitzinger is not interested in the actual plants or their will even if they are sitting in pots in his studio. For him, like the photos he has taken of them, they are only the starting point and a useful instrument in the new composition, they are the concentration and variation of a motif which appeals to him because of its 'paintability'. This is the only way to explain why all his motifs once they have proved appropriate, "become more and more autonomous". Their potential essentially lies in the reduction which the agave offers in formal terms so that series and variations are both possible. Indeed Kitzinger eliminates any details from view that might destroy the regular, homogenous nature of the picture as a whole, and adheres to the principle of adding to a series of composed picture elements. Kitzinger thus chooses to leave out growth deformations and injuries, offshoots and dead leaves; he also omits soil and pots, restrain jagged leaf edges, unify leaf drawings, change the color of the leaves and increases the harmony of the colors green and yellow. Kitzinger himself speaks about the luminosity of the color in terms of it having an "aquarium effect" which appeals to him. In order to achieve this effect he has to master the technical means formally but also ingeniously. Painterly bravura is not the aim in itself but essential for the content of Kitzinger's works. They are created along the guidelines of traditional panel paintings in the lengthy process of building up layers. The painter has used dibond panels as the medium. The object of the picture is built up in at least four or five layers from a preliminary sketch emphasized using acrylic. The texture of the uppermost skin is removed with a razor blade – not only at the end but also in between. It is also possible to make corrections – to a limited extent - in this way. Stephan Berg has pointed out that the painter detaches himself from the picture in this way and "that now an independent status can and must be claimed for it. With the cut of a razor blade the painting loses its author, but on the other hand it gains the possibility of no longer being understood as an expression of an individual painterly temperament. (4)

The panel picture is finally sealed with a varnish, first with a matt and then a semi-matt spray. The procedure by which a smooth, homogeneous yet non-reflecting surface is created can be considered a further way of rendering the artwork autonomous. As Kitzinger's works have no recognizable signature they do not stand for an artistic temperament but rather for themselves. Now, one could term this kind of painting "realistic". Undoubtedly there exist in the art world paintings you could refer to as virtuoso, superficial "realism" in which individual pictorial elements are shown in an overly clear way. But in contrast to Kitzinger's painting these works are then mostly photorealistic or even symbolist. The pictorial object is simply represented perfectly or an attempt is made to lend it a hidden meaning by arranging it in a certain way. Kitzinger's artistic stance, however, is by no means mannerist in this sense. The selection of picture sections already attests to this fact. He zooms in, cuts out, refocuses and isolates. The pictorial object is simplified and compacted to its mere prototypical appearance. Nothing is allusion, revelation or narration. Instead, something is 'simply' fixed and showcased. The visible, the surface and the painting triumph. But this is "not light fare and it becomes all the more overwhelming in that Thomas Kitzinger carries out his explorations without any pathos or metaphysical exaggeration, with the precision of a surgeon. (5)

Kitzinger's art of pure visibility is much closer to reductionist, minimalist positions in Modernism than it is realist. Like the former, his pictures also contain the moment of switching perception. And suddenly you understand that behind the objects there is "nothing, to see, just emptiness. For others there may be different worlds behind the surface – a context of meaning of things which exists from the beginning. (6)

Kitzinger's agaves are thus splinters of a reality understood as a sheath. This painting reconstructs reality layer for layer without ever wanting to eliminate the discrepancy between the realities of the subject and the object. "And so everything which appears on Thomas Kitzinger's pictures is proof furnished with the utmost precision that representation as a visualization of what is described can no longer exist in painterly symbols. (7)

What exists is solely the reality of the picture and in the final analysis it is this which concerns the viewer. Kitzinger's pictures become a space for thought in that his painting explains the process of how things both appear and recede before our very eyes. What do we see? Is it really just agaves?

(1) Stephan Berg: "Die Präsenz des Abwesenden," (The Presence of the Absent) in: Thomas Kitzinger, published by Kunstverein Freiburg im Marienbad, catalog, (Kunstverein Freiburg et. al, Freiburg, 1999), p. 7.

(2) Stephan Berg: "Die Leere der Dinge," (The Emptiness of Things), in: Thomas Kitzinger – Malerei, catalog, (Galerie Ulrich Gering, Frankfurt/M., 1995), p. 8.

(3) All quotes by Thomas Kitzinger stem from discussions between the author and the artist in the first half of 2004.

(4) Stephan Berg, see note 1, p. 7.

(5) Stephan Berg, see note 2, p. 9.

(6) From a text by author on the artist Aug. 25, 2003.

(7) Stephan Berg, see note 1, p. 7