China Ink Drawings | Federzeichnungen
49 x 65 cm, 44 x 60 cm, 41 x 29,7 cm, ink on paper, Vienna 1976-79
Pen and ink drawings, mostly on handmade paper. Figurative word games and alienations of meaning.
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China Ink Drawings | Federzeichnungen |
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Otto Kapfinger: Pictures without words, in: Renate Kordon Drawings 1976-79, Vienna 1980 / abridged version ...
Images have gained momentum. The psychotechnologists of marketing measure their capacity to convey a message in tenths of a second. Today we look at an image for a second and immediately ask: What does it mean? At that moment the image presents us with either an ostentatious message, a pithy signet or a simple puzzle which we are either immediately able to solve so that we are released from the suspense of questioning, or we are dumbfounded and lean over to read the puzzle’s solution written under the right or left corner of the picture frame. This usually leads to an ‘aha!’ or an ‘oh no!’—and then we turn our attention to the next thing. It may be that an image quickly answers our questions, in that it accentuates the dynamic mechanism of wit and comedy—compression, displacement, anthropomorphism, burlesque, etc., but that the way it is presented slightly slows down the release of tension, for instance by combining dynamic inner tension with a formally ‘slow’ type of presentation. The effect of the initial flash of surprise, of humor, recedes, but we have now been invited and are prepared to linger, to question further, to delve into deeper layers of the presented topic. Therefore, marginal notes on Pictures without Captions. Ways of Thought: Force-fed letters of the alphabet out of a spray can; cleansing; freshening up; deodorizing; fixating; wiping out thoughts and their brood. A shower of words that hollows out one’s head, a cranium-filling ABC-scented cloud, a fog-spewing transparent aerosol bottle disinfecting thought and knowledge—a vacuum- packed solution to problems. The Library of Babel: a bookshelf shaped like a giant open book in the corner of the study. In this large book the lines of type are the shelves. Books stand on these shelves as if being individual letters making up words. The lines of print in these normal-sized books are made up of very small books, whose letters are again made up of very tiny books, and so on. So the library is made up of an infinite number of books, without anything to read in them, without a single written word. A book of books, the lost ‘Library of Babel’ as a tautology; but also an allusion to the universal, meaningless connection of all writing: the medium is the message. On the Lookout: drawing back the curtains and looking at the world outside your window—or letting the pen glide over the white paper opening up the window onto the world of images. Drawing a window—the view from a window—describes the very process of depiction: the flat surface bulges out into space and opens up. A figure is leaning in the open window, at the viewers. But his eyes are covered, draped with little curtains, miniature versions of the window’s curtains. Is it a depiction of disguised curiosity or is it showing us that the figure at the window sees nothing more than the curtains even when the shutters are wide open and the curtains are drawn aside? That which is intended to prevent insight likewise obscures the view to the outside? The view from the window mirrors the viewing of the picture. The plane of reflection is the picture surface, de-materialized by the drawing in which illusion and reality merge. The foundation of the reality of the perceived world outside lies within our organs of vision. What the eyes see is created behind the curtain of the pupil. The room behind the window in the picture corresponds to the inner space of actual functioning human perception as opposed to the learned outer space of illusionary appearances. When, however, the perceived surroundings are accepted as ‘real’, they become the inner space of that same reality that the window of a picture opens to the illusionary and imaginary. Now the drawing bulges out from the real to the imaginary, to the space of theatre, a pretended, representative reality: the rising curtain marks the beginning of the play—the art. It is always the curtain in front of the picture-frame stage that starts the play, always the door to the museum that defines art and pinpoints all expectation, that sharpens our focus, creates the aura, and establishes the context. And this curtain, this framework, this aura, are so important, have become so independent and indispensable, that we finally only see through them and in the end only see them: without the curtain, no aura, no art. The context explains and determines what art is. Tables: which table is the real one? The one from which the duplicates originated, these endless reductions or enlargements, or both? One searches all over the image for one real, actual, proper table, although all the tables are equally unreal, being only pictorial representations. Because the drawing offers no clues or indications of its scale, the viewer, accustomed to searching for reality, walks straight into the trap, and at that moment the autonomous, representational aspect of the image lights up and evokes a fleeting smile. Fowl Justice: a fork-shaped and otherwise chicken foot- shaped chicken foot grabs the chicken foot-shaped and otherwise fork-shaped. Bad table manners for a chicken... Patience: growing underground Silence: a dozen windows, flapping open and closed, float back and forth through the air in a dark, windowless room. The room could be a shaft with the windows falling through it, about to crash and splinter. The indicated floor with the base board around it, however, turns this cubic prism, drawn from a central perspective, into a room whose imaginary wall with window or door lies in or behind the surface of the drawing. The windows seem to be flying from the room’s window in front into the room: a shower of splintered glass just as the pane breaks that separated inside from outside, the real from the imagined room? Every splinter a whole window again? In fact, the surface of the drawing is that unreal glassy plane of perspective which only has to be penetrated once, from the front towards the vanishing point, for us to visualize the flat surface as space, the unreal as real and the impossible as possible. Window Dress: a figure with covered eyes and face opposite an open window through which the sunlight is streaming in. Eyes blindfolded, groping towards the light, to the view, to a reality beyond that of the dark room. The small windows decorating the gown are like fetishes for the gleaming large one, or also like memories, vague impressions of windows already looked out from. Looking out is obviously a hazardous enterprise, a test mixed with yearning and timidity. The gaze of the upturned face cannot immediately bear the blinding light coming through the window, while the dress, the reality of the body, anticipates this light with many opened windows. Eve and Paradise / Apple Core Woman’s Head: Similar to Magritte’s falling apples, an apple core covers a woman’s head, replacing it. Women’s faces have to be made-up, ritualised, for continuous ogling or taking bites with the eyes always prepared to be on show and to tempt like a polished apple. Mouth-watering, just to look at them. Women’s heads are objects of pleasure. The core, the seeds and the stem are disposed of. Women’s heads are not for thinking, they are for nibbling. But it just may happen that a feeling of lost substance arises in the head, and the fact of being hollowed out is communicated through a related opposite. Mimicri: Pear tree tries on a coat. With its branches a tree can reach out to the sun and the air but putting on a coat is something altogether different. Why is a pear tree wearing a birch bark coat? Camouflage, deception, trophy? Clothes for something that is already dressed? Quite irritating for the bark considering its original role. Dog’s waistcoat and cat’s vest. |
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