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The representation of visual space
Most people react alike when they take a first, superficial look at Herbert Brandi's paintings. The pictures trigger all associations, with painters from the past, from Turner to Gerstl, or motifs such as landscapes, or ethereal feminine shapes (possibly equally past). These reactions come as no surprise when a painter such as Brandl is devoted to a kind of painting that is neither part of a mainstream defined by context or surface, nor part of American traditions built one way or the other on Abstract Expressionism or monochromatic painting. In certain respects the associations are not wrong, but become somewhat arbitrary upon closer perusal- a support structure without necessity; somehow disappointing, too, since they do not sustain much projective loading no landscape to enter, no woman to embrace, and the gaze from within the painting never really emerges either; there is a depth, but it seems only to be contemplative, like an Invitation printed on an insurmountable obstacle.
In his earliest works, painted under a condition of collective intoxication that satisfied the craving for pictures, Brandl also wields a neo-expressionist brush, but instead of easily legible icons and figures, he creates an abundance of symbols and references heading nowhere in particular, targeting no specific point. The implicitly anti-conceptual attitude of this re-emergence of painting is reversed in his pictures. They seem to dissolve under a barrage that comes from "outside of painting" and to want as a consequence of this impact to redefine easel painting. In the mid-eighties follows the closest approximation to figurative references - beyond the visual level, sky, water and earth become collective metaphors. >>
>> The result is not sell-contained painting that cares II we or nothing about what is going on outside, for here the external reference seeps downwards rather than beyond the edges. The edges are normally never entirely covered, or at least the paint is so diluted that all Interest in them is dissipated. It is precisely for that reason that they point in a different direction. Never, not even in the abstract compositions, is there a centre. The way up (or towards the outside, tot that matter) is barred too, so that the only way is into the deep. What remains on the surface is so obvious, self-evident in its representationality that representationality itself, in all its complexity, is up for doubt. This point is developed further in the drawings, albeit in a different way. The most obvious motifs are named, and if there are narratives, they are so crystal-clear that they cannot be the whole story. Celestial and terrestrial/ bodies, blown up sexual organs, actual/y ward off the sexual level in the representation while still alluding to it somehow, without, however, disclosing piece, form or meaning. The concept of over-draught referents is translated into visual reality; the traces of discharge can still be felt. In the course of the nineties, more and more light seems to emanate from Brandl's paintings. Figures, forms and oil paint dissolve ever further, without ever vanishing completely. The surface becomes ever more delicate and translucent without al/owing the gaze to see through it.
Sometimes, the stroke of brush is the most prominent moment, producing an effect similar to one in homeopathic medicine where only the trace releases the substance; except here, the drug is colour. The boundaries of colour and form almost disappear or vanish completely, to re-emerge in a different place. Sometimes the light seems to shine through other layers from behind; sometimes touches of light appear to have been added on from the outside.
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