Christoph Vitali
I have known and appreciated Franziskus Wendels for almost the past 15 years, since the year 1994, when I could as director of Haus der Kunst in Munich convey him one of the first of the German Art Prices donated at that time by the German Federal Association of Volks- and Raiffeisen Banks. Then, 10 year later, I wrote a contribution for his catalogue of the exhibition "Landflucht" at Küppersmühle in Duisburg and the Museum Ludwig in Koblenz. When I recently received photographs of the newest works of the artist, my surprise was great at how the vre of the in the meantime almost 48 year old had changed and developed.
Let me try to draw up shortly the extremely fascinating development of the work. Since I do not know in what order they are illustrated in the catalogue and hung in the exhibition, allow me to simply do it in my order. Had it been abstract geometrical works at the beginning of the nineties, which distinguished the young artist, he had already ten years later found his way back to figurative art. In the half of decade since his possibilities of expression have again been strongly enlarged and equally radically changed. He still deals with city scapes, as in "Fügung 8", "Housing", "Orbit 6" or "Mimikri" which become even more glittering and diffused in light. "Arivero" 4 and Süd 3 are two this time coloured city scapes, probably from Italian cities, in saturated clear yellow and brown colour shades, or even more dissolved in "Undercover" 1 and 3. To these are added quite suddenly magnificent harbour scenes with boats enveloped in dark blue and green like "Wird kommen..." 3 and 4 and "Big Ahoi". The city and harbour landscapes are joined unexpectedly again by mountain landscapes in "Echo" 1, 4, 5, and 6 with dormant alpine huts in a deep blue atmosphere and only almost magically illuminated by a golden glittering window. In "Reflex" 1 and 2 and "Sunday 5" appears also for the first time in the complex creation of Wendels' the interior with floor lamps in again mostly warm colours. The new scene of the interior is being continued in works like "Das letzte in Kürze" 4 and 5, in which fascinating interior spaces with large dimly lit windows and equally impressive ceilings out of glass can be felt and lived with almost tangibly. In the works "Nemesis" 2 to 7 the reference in substance is equally encoded in a mysterious manner. The works depict probably pedestals of pillars which are overshadowed by strange herbal figures. We remark a new almost complete passage to abstraction in "Elle", "Ich Dich auch 2" as well as "Lydisch", "Flangranti" and "Flagranti 3", which in "Hide and seek" 1, 2, 4, 7 and 8, five works which convince by their richness of contrasts is being brought to a consequent end and executed in a completely convincing manner. The installation "Landflucht" in the catalogue of 2004, the first purely photographic image among many painted ones, is accompanied with a new work "Count down". In a particular way attractive and exciting is the juxtaposition of photographic interiors, a kind of swimming pool or emptied large kitchen with and without human beings in it, with tiled floors and walls or a petty bourgeois window wall with a little curtain and radiator with city light images, almost driven to abstraction, and which can be experienced only intuitively. Completely enigmatic but no less mysteriously prepossessing are finally combinations of runic figures and letters in a loud and vehement green.
With his works since the year 2004/2005 Franziskus Wendels has gone a long way which keeps almost all options open for the future. I am very curious in regard to the continuation of the development of the artist in the second half of his life. Maybe the development will be logical and consequent, and maybe there will be in the next decade an equally exciting new orientation, a new beginning again. We may indeed be eager to learn it. Let me express my high and undivided appreciation for the works which are being shown now in three major art institutions of Germany. A very talented young artist has already become today a master of many forms of expression of contemporary art. His is full of promise for the future.
Christoph Vitali
(June 2008 / Text from the catalogue IN-Side-OUT)
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