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(behind the centre)
a landscape – painting always seems to be like a window. We learned to see it in the forms and structures, the painters invented over the centuries.
- behind the centre – means that those invented structures fall by stretching the angle of the view, shown in an image. The result of a super wide angle view of up to 180 degrees is an increase of tension in the centre of an image. The question was, how to deal with its distinct quality.
Disturbances of different kinds, like added figures, faces, non fitting or repeated structures etc., are leading to the beholders ability to get in contact to his own feelings, while facing the picture. Just like the human eye works, which is trained to fix something and also registrating its surrounding in the same time, but in a different, inconcrete way, while being out in the nature.
This combination of different levels of seeing gives us the feeling of being inside or part of the environment.
Manuel Garde 8/2004
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(certified)
the time of digital photography and computer images are a challenge to the “how and what for” painting is destinated to these days.
The question is:
Can a painted portrait represent someone, even in the demands of state authorities? In Germany the “Bundesdruckerei” is the institution that produces passports as well as the money. The highest security – standards in times of crime and terror, scrutinizing someone’s aim for a new personal certificate is self evident.
A painted life – size portrait of the artist was photographed and made its way to become the new identification card and passport to be used as basic elements for a sequence of art – works. This process touched a couple of interesting questions about human existence as an individual. So this image of a man became certified, which was assembled by different sources in a painting. - the certified painting -
The materials used in the portrait like the shirt and the tie, were chosen to become part of the later works, both original and as a painted fake.
Manuel Garde 8/2004
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(the cross)
older than the Christian heritage, is one of the almost unchangeable symbols in Christian iconography.
As it contains imaginations that grew over a long period of time in the minds of European people, it is one of the strongest communicators that we have in our culture.
The artwork is a confrontation between the main coordinates in the north – German landscape, the horizon and the vertical axis, converted into a natural cross in one hand, and the mostly withheld visions and imaginations of the average beholder on the other hand. A try to recover, how strong a heritage can be.
In order to allow a non prejudiced impression, realistic painted nature – elements were used as a cross in very different variations. Seemingly natural configurations, combined with varied disturbances, that should lead into the spiritual sphere of the image.
Manuel Garde 8/2004 |
Garde @ haiss.net