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| My Artistic Imperative by Clemens Frischenschlager "Abstract paintings"—that is my usual response to the ubiquitous question "what kind of painting do you do?" Occasionally I elaborate, adding that "I mess around with colors." Although this answer accurately outlines the way I work, I notice that people react with unease. They find in it a lack of concept. Let me explain: Painting is a primal activity for me, one that evokes the richness of everyday experiences by utilizing the raw means of a painter. My initial idea of a painting is rarely determined by a theme, concept or title. Sketchy images do; call them abstract visions. The other dominant parameter of my visual vocabulary—the human body—typically serves as the other determinant. Humans, humans only, shape our world, in big and small ways. As my reflections on personifications—including myself—go inward and outward, so do my intentions to understand and interpret them. I do this with the means of canvas and paint, by eliciting uncontrollable forces that can be unleashed when these materials collide.
In the parallel process of creating those paintings, each of them took unexpected turns that I had not anticipated, let alone planned for. What happened? The answer is so banal, it has kept me busy ever since. At work on those canvases, heavily inspired by life-drawing, the physical nature of painting took up a life of its own. The colors that I applied reacted strongly with each other, merged, went all over the place, dripped on the floor—damn! I was trying to control this strange, exciting process, yet I ended up yielding much of the eventual outcome and the ultimate look of the paintings to forces within the process, and to laws of nature. What a mess. Unsurprisingly, the two paintings ended up looking quite different, despite the similar point of departure. To my satisfaction—and at odds with tightly controlled conservatory approaches to creating art—I loved the unexpected results that suddenly graced my studio. Since then, spectacles like these have repeated themselves multiple times. Capturing the moment when a painting is finished, however, continues to be the biggest challenge. It’s that magic moment, after all, that determines a painting’s survival under time’s scrutiny. Which leads to the other dimension of the process of creating art—the audience. You. Art enthusiasts are confronted with the sum of impressions left on a canvas, the final manifestation of a visual and emotional process that may have played out over extended periods of time. As our individual art experiences overlap in places like galleries, we realize how differently each of us perceives a particular piece of art.
This is by way of saying that responses to my paintings and their interpretations have been diverse over the years, curiously far-fetched in some instances. Ultimately we see what we want to see. And my own interpretations? For the most part, I am happy to create Rorschach tests such as The Evolution Paintings, and listen to what viewers see in them. Clemens Frischenschlager 2002 |
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| The
New Works 2006-pres. |
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| The
Evolution Paintings 1995-2005 |
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| Immersed
in Emergence Review by Alan Lockwood |
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| My
Artistic Imperative Essay by C. Frischenschlager |
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| The
Graffiti Paintings 1996-1998 |
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| Fire
Oven (Tapestry)
1994-1995 |
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| The Student Years 1990-1995 |
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© 2005-10 Clemens Frischenschlager | Terms | Design: Mintwave