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The Lure of Images
An interview with Franziskus Wendels, by Guido Reuter
Guido Reuter:
Franziskus, for more than twenty years now, you have consistently worked in the medium of painting, although there are surely more up-to-date media with which one can do art nowadays. What importance do you attach to painting as an artistic medium, and how do you explain the considerable significance this medium continues to have in art today?
Franziskus Wendels:
It is interesting that the only context in which painting plays a role today is in art. Images made by hand are almost absent form the huge pictorial cosmos in which we live. Even animated films are now mostly made with computers. The only places where you find paintings are in galleries and nursery schools, both of which have a lot in common. I believe that the fascination of painting lies in its immediacy. You draw a line, a dot and a surface with your hand, and amazingly something comes into being as a result. There is perhaps hardly any other activity with which we can experience the phenomenon of creativity as directly as in painting. That is the key to the power of painted images.
Guido Reuter:
When contemplating your pictures, I cannot help wondering what role beauty plays in or for your work. It is striking that precisely the more recent paintings, which have a gloss finish, possess a very beautiful and graceful quality. Beauty arouses considerable suspicion in the eyes of many contemporary artists. They see it as something deceitful and void of force. I do not entirely share this point of view.
Franziskus Wendels:
The problem is probably that beauty is often equated with superficiality. These things often occur together, as for example in beautiful people who lay great store by their appearance. However, it would obviously be odd if we were to conclude, by inversion, that intellect can only occur in the guise of ugliness, or that ugliness automatically promises profundity. Instead of beauty, I would rather talk of attractiveness or of the charm that a work of art possesses. I think it is worthwhile trying to create works of art that have the capacity to attract a spectator. Yet this in itself is not enough. The really interesting thing is what happens to us when we get involved with a work of art, how our perception changes, and how we become conscious of something or how things rearrange themselves in new ways.
Guido Reuter:
Could it be said that beauty in the works you have painted over the last few years developed, from a certain moment onwards, into a kind of trap for the spectator? The painting technique - with less vivid colours, and soft borders between one colour and the next - at first appears to be very attractive. But having become more involved in the seductive effect of your painting, a sudden change comes about: One becomes increasingly disorientated and unsure about what one sees or thinks one sees. The question arises whether we really see what we think we can see, or whether it is altogether something else. Standing in front of the paintings, we can merely acknowledge a sense of amazement and think Oh.
Franziskus Wendels:
That is well put. This Oh is important. I get the same impression with other art forms, and am disappointed when something works out too easily and stays on one level. This does not mean that something has to be complicated. On the contrary, complicated things often require too much energy before they get to a crucial point. Things should be multidimensional. One needs the opportunity to see things from another perspective, to see something from the outside or to be able to go around it. This multidimensionality seems to me to be what makes art exciting. The attractiveness of a work then acts merely as the lure or the outer framework.
Guido Reuter:
A prominent aspect of your paintings is blurredness. This has a special aesthetic appeal of its own and is also responsible for disorientating the spectator, as I said earlier on. Blurredness causes us to be not entirely sure about what we see, which in turn spurs us to look more closely. One is never really in a position to grasp the precise object of your paintings. What should the spectators see, and what do you present them with?
Franziskus Wendels:
You have almost already answered your own question: Blurredness arouses the wish to want to see something clearly, although this cannot be satisfied via the picture itself. Thus the imagination or memory is brought into play. I find this phenomenon of the inner image extremely interesting. Everyone has such visual memories of things, of places, and of events or encounters. These images often make a far stronger and more intimate impression than photographs. This is another reason why I never work from photographs, but only from sketches.
Guido Reuter:
I can understand that. Yet again, Id like to underline the fact that, with the works you have painted over the last few years, you seem to knock the spectator off balance. The way you paint causes spectators to become insecure about whether they know what they can see.
Franziskus Wendels:
That is probably a further aspect of blurredness, such that the paintings take on the quality of a question. This applies especially to motifs that are so familiar to us so that we are not even conscious of seeing them. It also applies to spatiality. With some pictures one can no longer precisely say where one stands as a spectator, whether one is on the inside or on the outside, or even whether one is in a space or not.
Guido Reuter:
What you say reminds me of your installations, which confront the spectator with a special kind of multidimensionality. This arises out of the gulf which exists between what can be seen in the light and what appears when the light goes out.
Franziskus Wendels:
First of all, these works are far more complex than paintings. On the one hand they are three-dimensional and one can move around in them. On the other hand, they have a temporal dimension, and alternate between light and dark around every sixty seconds. They also convey a tension between daytime reality and nighttime reality.
Guido Reuter:
I do not think of this merely as a form of tension, but as a very poetic confrontation between two images. For example, in the light one can see a pile of bulky refuse, which in the dark turns into a beaming city silhouette. In my opinion this gives rise to a particularly intensive array of meanings.
Franziskus Wendels:
There is indeed a metaphorical level. But what interests me just as much is the spatial aspect. In the case of the bright scenes, one is confronted directly with things which effectively close off the space. They can have an almost oppressive effect on the spectator. When the light goes out, a wide perspective and expanse opens up. This aspect is particularly important in these works.
Guido Reuter:
Have you got an idea about the direction your art will be taking in the future? Do you have firm new plans or ideas, or do you rather wait to see where your work takes you?
Franziskus Wendels:
I have no precise idea about what the future has in store. That would be boring. However, I do not have the impression that I let myself be carried along by my work, as if I were sitting on a raft drifting along with the current. I still tend to do some rowing. I experience my work more as a dialogue. I usually have several ideas about what the future could have in store. But whenever I try to put them into practice I often end up in a dead end or notice that I do not want to go in that direction. Pictures often function like questions, and one has no other choice than to leave them to stand for a while, the pictures in the studio and the ongoing question in ones head. But pictures can also provide an answer or an interesting piece of advice - often at times when one is not expecting them, when in the middle of working, as if in a subclause.
(The interview was conducted in April 2008 in Daun)
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