On the Meditative Black Watercolors of Joachim Bandau
Dr. Katja Blomberg, Art Critic, Berlin
When all doors
open, when all abysses of fear have been overcome and every subjective desire
has been switched off, when the view gets clear like a mountain lake in spring,
when the excited play of thoughts is interrupted and the hand finds rest, there
comes to life a state of being out of which Joachim Bandau, born 1936, creates
his meditative watercolors. For more than twenty years now the sculptor has
been practicing this painting rite, demanding the highest degree of
concentration, self-possession, discipline, trust and patience. The work,
graphic-painterly, is created by a contemporary who thinks three-dimensionally,
whose work mirrors inner spaces, which have recently become increasingly more
complex, layered in and about one another. Bandau understands how to employ his
media with ever greater sovereignty, unveiling picture-spaces of nearly musical
transparence while retaining a great sensual vision.
Even as Miles
Davis' free improvisations trumpet wildly through his studio while Bandau
works, the inner force of his "Black Watercolors" remains unbroken.
Immersed in the painting process, he turns it around: lines emerge not as
borders of surface-space but as a result of application of areas of color.
While drying, lines form, made up of clotted paint-pigment, sharp and clear at
the color's edges, applied by a broad Japanese brush. The lines are so fine the
viewer thinks they were made by a pencil. These lines have been created with no
further device than the meeting of wet and dry paint-surfaces while applying a
brush not too softly nor too hard. Where surface touches surface, where paint
layers overlap, building on top of one another, increasing in density to form
rhombic shapes, picture-spaces of unquestionable architectural quality are
unveiled: corridors, cells, walls open entirely new fields of association.
Bandau has
increasingly been keen to avoid routine. Rest periods set between painting
phases are just as important to him as the action itself. He works till
exhaustion, on light and dark rows each individually, in a single extended
session. Such phases occur in studios in StŠfa, on Lake Zurich, and at Aachen,
lasting from two or three weeks up to several months. He plans his subject only
vaguely. He decides whether he should explore layers, couplings, diagonals,
rows, mirrorings. Once the individual sheet has been put on a neutral ground,
it paints itself, so to speak, step by step. What was wished
for beforehand is not always what gets created. The paradisiacal state of being
Ð highest concentration Ð bears fruit with surprises emerging out the work
process. During this time, the artist has to remain hyper-aware of the dynamics
of what occurs. Mistakes and corrections are hardly possible here. He works in
a circuitous way while bending over and moving about the painting table,
simultaneously working from all sides, while the paper curls and buckles under
wet paint layers, creating "lakes" and "mountains." By
moving it to and fro, dabbing up the superfluous amounts of pigment, he directs
paint-flow toward the edges, where those hard dry lines are formed that divide
up the pictorial space.
Each field gains
its own autonomy while being worked on individually and pressed to dry. The
long and complicated process Ð consisting of painting, drying, painting, drying
Ð nearly reminds one of extra-sensitive varnishing work. Among the challenges
of the process is the fact that the artist reacts creatively even to varied
conditions of the paper. It might be the surface of the paper contains tinges
of color or miniscule glue-segments, differentiating among themselves in how
they take layered applications of paint-pigment, which can lead to spots and
streaks, which the artist skillfully disguises.
The meditative
work of the sculptor-as-painter demands great finesse and technical agility.
Recently, Bandau's painted sheets have gained much in virtuosity. They remind
one of landscapes, glass objects and spatial constellations, reminiscent of Dan
Graham's pavilions and lamp-objects by Jorge Pardo.
The initial
series of watercolors was created in the summer of 2004. The series developed
in parallels, across four to five sheets of paper. Areas of color soar
diagonally over the individual sheets' borders. Or blocks have been formed
resembling dark windows at whose edges the dying rays of daylight seem to have
fallen, spread out in different values of
gray. This aspect of the work-as-process gets its emphasis by being
drawn in a definite direction over the various sheets of paper.
Each of these
works is individually framed. The works may be turned about, put in a different
order, to create surprising tensions between their elements. Progressive stages
in the new series become visible, quite reminiscent of Duchamp's Bride
Descending the Staircase and the repertoire of the Italian and Russian
futurists in the early twentieth century, without directly quoting them.
Despite his distant proximity to modern art history, Bandau stands by himself.
As a sculptor he recreates shadows, objects, walls, rooms, floors, windows,
gray on gray, with transparence and peace, as though from the distance of a
remote state of consciousness. Here lies what is most mysterious, at the same
time most convincing, about the new watercolors: their transparence, openness.
On Occasion of
the exhibition of Joachim Bandau at PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY, 2004