Hecht
Künstler/in
Heiko Bressnik
(geb. 1961 in Villach, Kärnten)
Date2009
ClassificationsMalerei
MediumAcryl auf Leinwand
Dimensions150 × 350 cm
Credit LineArtothek des Bundes
Object number27958
DescriptionIn his studio, Berlin-based Austrian artist Heiko Bressnik has a ‘powder chamber:’ a perfectly enclosed, transparent box containing an electric grinder, into which a rubber glove is built so that the artist can work within the sealed environment. Inside this homemade and rather folksy-looking device, Bressnik atomizes whatever it is he wishes to portray in one of his paintings—whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral. He then uses the finely ground powder as the medium with which to create an image of that object in two dimensions on canvas. The result is that one can never say that a painting by Bressnik is ‘of’ something without involuntarily enacting the artist’s grand joke on the language of images: one means it is a ‘picture of’ its subject, but without necessarily intending to, one has always already also pointed out that it is a ‘picture made of’ its subject.
The thorny implications of this ‘picture of/made of’ linguistic mechanism serve to poke such pointed fun at certain artistic and philosophical conventions that they end up tearing holes in them, for it doesn’t sit well in the mind structured by language to have a picture of something that is made from the physical substance of that thing. The object is present before us, but looking at the image, we wish to speak of it as represented; this is what feels appropriate despite it’s being untrue, which is troublesome...
Abraham Orden, Vienna 6 April 2009
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