Opening: 21st April 2017 7 pm – 10 pm
Duration of the exhibition: 22nd April – 01st June 2017
Ending: 01st June 6 pm – 9 pm
Series, Repetition, Variation and the continually infinitely continuing – The principle of the series is represented several times in Bernhard Paul’s painting. The artistic concept, the music that underlies painting and the temporal aspect of the production process, are all bound to the serial. For Bernhard Paul the serial mode of production is a pictorial language, which he constantly tests and expands.
From 1910 onwards similar processes took place in music. Just as serial painting questioned established values of aesthetics, the currents of the so-called “new music” brought about a reorientation of the musical language. Through the step-by-step task of the major-minor tonality up to the twelve-tone music, New Music broke with the harmonic system. Dissonance, polyphony and a radically new aesthetic were the result.
Bernhard Paul takes the “New Music” as the basis of his art and produces from this influence painting processes. The constant repetitions, constants and interruptions bring Paul as a succession of brush strokes and rhythmic ducts on the canvas. With this method the artist produces results such as the composer: sound, polyphony and dissonance.
One could understand Bernhard Paul’s paintings as painted compositions, as illustrated music, but this would not do justice to his painting. It is more than that. Strict uniformity and systematic style of painting create an irritation, an overburden in all the clarity of the form language. When the individually applied colors are mixed in the eye of the beholder, the lines, repeats and rows are considered as a whole, then a flickering is produced which affects all the senses. The color areas of the individual works appear multi-dimensional and swell as a series to something larger.
Text: Julia Schattauer
Painting: Detail: interlude JC-07, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 70 cm