"GAME OVER" (Painting over photography).9/7/09-8/8/09
Vernissage on Thursday, July 9th at 20 h/Bergstübl/Invalidenstraße 151/Berlin, Germany. www.facebook.com/bergstuebl
 

Old photographs, neutral, anonymous, black and white, bought at Berlin flea markets, up to 30 cm x 30 cm, are painted, in one brushstroke, then transferred, enlarged, onto canvas and then painted again so as to give them stronger texture and a new identity.

These photos, family portraits, are decomposed, juxstaposed by large brushstrokes. Painting in this way, reflects a connexion to reality of the order of the uncertain, the imaginary, evoking the fleetingnees of life ; and the violence, painting on what was once intimate and unique.

To me it seems normal to paint on these photos, to give them a new meaning, revealing their psychological nature, letting the faces dissapear under a wave of white paint, marks, spontaneously.

It is probably a writer's work, of inspiration, of dialogue between two worlds, a visual metaphore for the suspicion which a painter holds towards an image of reality.

Photographic portraits where the framing is banal, the banality of the scene throws one back again, to a new life. By painting them, covering them, the painting functions like a filter or photographic effect, such as contrast, under/over exposure, depth of field, focus, modifying a reality which can and could never be reproduced.

One believes in photography, almost naturally. It has replaced certain paintings, illustrations, which, by representing reality, inform us about reality.

Photos change our manner of seeing and thinking ; photos are considered true and paintings false.

I empty the photographic image, putting in its place, painting as a recording of the real, authentically, at the beginning, by pulling back time, before the photograph was even taken, an impossible, before the image came to make its mark on the photosensitive emulsion and gelatine. It is what could have been photographed if the camera had been sensitive, in the way John Cage modifies the strings of a piano.

These large traces are also distortions, revelations, photography coming alive,  expressing itself in a new imaginary realm.