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ARTEXT : La Biennale di Venezia
" HERBERT BRANDL "
In his exhibition in the Austrian Pavilion, Herbert Brandl is showing 13 paintings of differing sizes. He created all of them in 2007 specially for the pavilion. The artist, who was born in Schwanberg, in the Steiermark, and lives in Vienna, is now known among international experts, thanks to a series of important exibitions and projects, as one of the most original and powerful painters to appear in recent years. His solo show at the Venice Biennale is a major artistic gesture showing a wide personal repertoire. Hans Ulrich Obrist talks to Herbert Brandl HUO: You take images from picture databases as your starting-point. How does the transformation happen? Do you use projection? HB: No. That doesn’t work. I always act spontaneously. I do know more or less where I’m aiming for, but not how. In other words I don’t ever depict something; instead I allow changes in form and colour into Brandl’s painting, over the decades. (.. ) HUO: Are your pictures a metaphor for climbing? HB: No, not really. Although I am continually threatened with sliding masses of paint, barely have a safe place to stand, struggle with hunger and the cold, but they are definitely not metaphors for climbing. I am basically an observer and not a climber of mountains. HUO: Does literature play any role for you? HB: The painting/literature interface doesn’t exist for me. HUO: What role does Arnold Schönberg’s painting play for you? HB: The dilettante aspect of this painting particularly fascinated me, its muddy amateurishness. It was much more about the way he painted than the content. HUO: A second paradox is noticeable in your painting from the 1990s: the paradox between on the one hand a very physical layering of paint and on the other a kind of dissolving, in which the material of the paint almost disappears. How do you explain these contrasting tendencies? HB: Breathe in – breathe out, up and down. Left and right. Above and below. Front and behind. Completely equivocal. HUO: I think that there is a similar oscillation between abstraction and figuration. In purely abstract exhibitions figuration often suddenly plays a role again. HB: Exactly. It is a movement between fields of tension. It would be tempting to commit oneself and to say: “This is the direction I’m taking now. This is where I’m going.” But the more dominant phenomenon apparently is in fact that you’re standing on one spot, see another and want to go over there instead. HUO: Another oscillation? HB: Oscillation is essential. I think there should be many more different containers.
Artista : Herbert Brandl
Web Site : http://www.herbertbrandl.at |
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Artext © 2007 |