The Vase
or
Subversion of Simplicity

There are many advantages in the use of such a simple object as a vase. In its plain, archaic form it remains open for almost every modification, be it in colour or in form. In addition universal recognition can be used as an effect and therefore open up the vision behind the object as such.
If I paint a vase large enough so that it threatens to destroy the format, the perception automatically transgresses the object “vase” and remains searching for different clues. The same can happen when the “object” is confronted with geometrical forms. As the elements in my paintings are neither strongly distorted nor expressively overemphasised, they first of all appear perfectly “normal.” But then after a while the contradiction between the daily habit of perception and the representation of the painting takes effect.
The vase previously identified as a simple form is positioned in front of two surfaces for example which obtain their presence only through their colour, while the vase still requires some spatiality. Which habit is the eye to follow? Is it to look for a coloured abstract effect in the vase itself or rather construct a special analogy to it out of the coloured surfaces? A gap opens between what is visible and what is perceived. The instance that both the vase and the coloured areas appear very matter of fact like, almost creating a picturesque unity therefore, widens the gap, once occurred, even further.
The gap developing, between what is material on the painting and how our habit to see changes that, consists of the essential effect in my work; It constitutes of the open space that makes the painting a painting, which exclusively belongs to those who know how to use it, namely the spectators.

 

Urban Saxer

 

Translation: Ruedi Jean-Richard

Time of the Wide Spaces

One square and a little colour isn’t much to create a whole world out of. The fascination of a painting for me lies in its restriction. The capability and readiness to allow for coloured surfaces to enter the mind as independent experience of space or object, is at the same time deeply human and as distant from human ratio as ever imaginable. I’m trying to place my work within this field of tension in that contradiction. The concrete presence of the objects is kept in a balance with the intangibility of the surrounding surfaces. There’s no predetermined interpretation and the length of time needed to develop such a one should not be restrained. Wherever readable objects are missing there are lines or geometrical elements. They provoke in their relation with one another and the surrounding area an incentive which creates a mood or associations beyond what has been seen, and in the ideal case even carries them along away from the painting. Once I have succeeded in taking the coloured surfaces as far as that, they start to allow for the influence of space and temporal effect. Then I have arrived at the point when I can put the brush down and offer what has been created to the spectator and his or her perception.

 

What’s on the Paintings

In my paintings abstract and concrete elements appear not always clearly separated, but often simultaneously. I thereby try to achieve an expansion of what is visible on the surface. The solitary line on the surface should lose its character as a stroke of paint on the canvas and enter into the field of the spectator’s imagination. In this imagination the dimensions are no longer fixed, but can be mixed and topple over one another. The line can, contrary to all material reality, start to float in the colour. A fruit too leaves its overcome meaning behind in front of a concrete background. It becomes a plaything of our thoughts with its form and symbolism, unknowingly confronting individual experience and associations of which it has no knowledge, and still, in the ideal case, fits smoothly besides them. I am therefore while creating a picture responsible for every single millimetre on the surface and can play God in that sense. At the same time though I do not have the slightest idea what happens where the painting finally ends; namely in the imagination of the spectator. I find myself in the odd situation of knowing the material reality on the canvas down to the last dot (or should know it at least), but its effects remain to a large degree beyond my reach. This paradox is perhaps the most important motivation for my painting, because in a sense the liberty of creation on the surface of the canvas in its kind corresponds somehow to the freedom of imagination. In this sense therefore the most exciting aspect in my pictures is not necessarily what is on the surface, but rather what lies behind, besides or in front of it.