Wilhelmstraße 118, 10963 Berlin
Breakdown Cleanup
Oil on paper
280 x 300 cm
Installation view
Frontviews, Berlin
Oil on paper
280 x 300 cm
Installation view
Frontviews, Berlin
2015
My work
starts at my work. I paint something. Often I don‘t like it. So I paint over it.
Even if I don‘t feel creative at all, I paint. At the end, it looks all too
creative and I must declare to myself: it‘s too much art, but has nothing at
all to do with art. To set
bounds to this arbitrary creativity and to reduce my own influence, different
methods have been applied: I would copy other artist’s work, paint from other
peoples photos, have other artists or non-artists copy my paintings, ask an assistant
to paint at instructions or ask him for instructions. I paint blind, in the rain
or I would print on disorderly arranged stripes of paper to attain patterns which
I wouldn‘t have come up with myself.
Another attempt to get around that capricious artistic creativity was undertaken with the particular support of divine powers. Starting from the classic idea of the artist receiving divine vision through in-spiratio, I put myself in a condition where my soul would be attuned to receive the spirit. For a religious person that is practically done in divine service at church, which well corresponds to the artist‘s work in his studio. Thus, I begun a work process which would require strong concentration yet give little room for mental labelling.
Days after
completed work I went through the bundle of painted sheets of paper to find a
remarkable outcome: the most well-made pieces came insignificant and blank,
whereas the most deficient ones, accomplished in the final stage the process,
running out of paint, seemed vibrant with life. Only fragments of a vision
appear in these failures – some paper sheets show almost nothing at all – but
there is a vital reality that makes them whole and complete. Similarly, a greek
torso appears whole in its fragmentariness. Divine presence, after all, is
whole by definition.
Homepage Emanuel Bernstone
