The Recent Works of Hermann-Josef Kuhna
One might almost be descending into some mesmerizing underwater world, where bright but indistinct creatures sway and float before our eyes. If we surrender to the currents, we become part of this process, in which color itself is liberated from any extraneous mandate. This is not to suggest that we are in the presence of some self-indulgent l’art pour l’art aesthetic. However “lyric” and spontaneously gestural they may appear at first encounter, Hermann-Josef Kuhna’s works are constructed with painstaking precision, evolving layer after layer in a disciplined pictorial process. One might almost speak of “built” works, in which each single component is essential to the overall structure. On the other hand, the essential impulse behind these works is plainly more organic than constructivist.
The formal rigidity of an Albers or Vasarely is completely foreign to these compositions, even if the dynamic interaction of color is essential to their reception. Kuhna begins with an explicit conception of the mood or message or rhythm he wishes to articulate, as signaled by titles like “wellenreiter” (2006) or “fruits diffusés” (2008) or “palim palim” (2009). While some compositions strive for a delicate balance, others churn with dervish-like energy. “nervöser k” (2008) celebrates a sprightly dance, while “aktiv rectangel” (2008) or “götterfunken” (2008) seems to suggest a steadily wending procession - or perhaps a conga line?
The titles of the works are suggestive, not programmatic, though they may well offer us a clearer perception of the artist’s intentions by leading us deeper into the composition, where layers sometimes seem to press and shift against each other like tectonic plates. The layering can also be thought of in terms of a palimpsest, whose successive texts are obscured but never entirely extinguished. The great English essayist Thomas De Quincey compared the palimpsest to the workings of memory: “What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain? Such a palimpsest is my brain; such a palimpsest, O reader! Is yours. Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished.” Sigmund Freud drew similar analogies to the so-called “Wunderblock” that permitted children to write or draw on a wax plate and then to erase the results to make room for something new. Even if undecipherable, traces of the “old” always remained.
For structuralists and post-structuralists, the palimpsest became a metaphor for the process of writing itself, while in the visual arts the CoBrA Group, including Pierre Alechinski and Asger Jorn, used the term to describe the technique of painting over preexistent backgrounds like maps and newspapers and airline tickets. Such experiments, of course, are a far cry from the disciplined and virtually classic technique of Hermann-Josef Kuhna. No visitor to his studio can overlook the precision with which brushes and tubes and pots of paint are organized – all ready to do the artist’s bidding. And the sweetly pungent odor of turpentine in the air underscores the significance of craft that we encounter here. Yet for all the precision of these canvases, there remains a lingering sense that something may be concealed in their depths. Indeed, subliminal structures may literally emerge from time to time, reminiscent of landscape or seascape – even of human anatomy, as in the trilogy of “evas” illustrated in these pages. (The erotic dimension of Kuhna’s pictures is an essential part of their amazing vitality – as are the playfulness and humor that enliven many compositions.) It is as though the true subject were tantalizingly concealed behind shimmering veils, like the voluptuous Salome. Or are we merely glimpsing the legendary Fata Morgana, who will vanish at the very moment we attempt to grasp her?
In earlier works, figuration was often more overt, as in the muscular nudes of the series entitled “grosser akt” (1985). In “grosser roter stuhl” (1979), the filigreed silhouette of a chair both blends subtly into the total composition and emerges emphatically from it. In the most recent of Kuhna’s paintings, the mimetic impulse has virtually disappeared. Where vestiges remain, they are so subtly insinuated as to fuse seamlessly into the overall composition. To this extent, the pictorial program has become increasingly minimalist, while the articulation of that program has been maximized. Rhythm, coloration and spatiality are the prime values, even in those rare instances when a literal subject once more insinuates itself. Where this still occurs, it is primarily landscape that the eye distills from the fields of floating color. Nature is a constant source of personal pleasure and pictorial inspiration for the artist. Even if the title of the work sends no direct signal, the merest suggestion of a horizontal structure is apt to trigger such associations. This has something to do with the visual habits instilled by traditional painting, but also with stance and proportion.
Whether horizontal, like the earlier “halong bay” (2003) and the recent “ebbe” (2009), or vertical, like “roskoff” (2009), the spatial experience establishes a direct relationship to the viewer. This is not merely a perceptual experience but a physical one as well, in which the viewer is drawn almost bodily into the atmosphere of an individual composition. “gesäht” (2007) is a strong example of this energy-transfer, as are “sassnitz night” and “sassnitz morning” (both 2007). And while Kuhna occasionally works in smaller formats, most of his paintings employ what might be termed “the human scale.” They can thus generate fields of energy that encourage an active rather than a merely passive reception. Because these “all-over” compositions flow without interruption across the canvas, the fields also seem to extend horizontally. Thus, a work is not so much a “window” through which we peer as it is an environment through which we move.
Among the numerous influences that have shaped this unique form language, two should receive particular emphasis: Hermann-Josef Kuhna’s passionate interest in paleontology and his discovery of the works of Vincent van Gogh. The fascination with fossils began when Kuhna was only eight years old, and it remains unabated today. The artist confesses that he is more likely to accept an invitation as guest professor if the geography in question promises a particularly interesting harvest for the fossil-gatherer. The gathering itself is followed by a systematic process of categorizing and labeling and registration that lends order to seemingly random finds. The sedimentary strata that the fossil-gatherer explores reveal obvious parallels to the paintings, but also to the process by which a painting is realized. Occasionally a title like “steinbruch” (2008) makes direct reference to this passion. Kuhna’s professionalism in the field of paleontology is indicated by the fact that his private collection, gathered over decades, has now become part of the Geological Collection of the Natural History Museum in Münster, while he himself has been accredited to pursue his passion even in areas closed to amateurs. Needless to say, the empty drawers and cabinets left behind in his Düsseldorf studio are filling up once more with his finds – most recently, those made during a sojourn in Provence.
Kuhna’s interest in van Gogh dates to his own student days, when he encountered the Dutch painter’s “Bridge at Arles” (1888) with its echoes of the Japanese woodcuts with which Van Gogh had been absorbed a few years earlier. In light of his own later achievements, it is easy to imagine what might have appealed to Hermann-Josef Kuhna as a young student: the balanced tranquility of the scene, the luminosity of the composition, the fragmentation into strokes and jabs of color that the eye of the viewer “mixes” into subtly differentiated tonalities. Van Gogh had traveled to France, where he hoped to establish an “Atelier of the South” for himself and artist colleagues, in search of “the lovely contrasts of red and green, of blue and orange, of sulfur and lilac,” as he wrote to his brother Theo.
But he was not content to accept without amendment what nature offered him. Each picture had its own color scheme, which might include a green sky with rose-colored clouds. “I take from nature a certain sequence and a certain precision in the placement of tones; I study nature so as not to do anything stupid…, but whether the color I use is precisely what I see doesn’t really matter to me, so long as it works on the picture itself…” Nonetheless, the results never seem garish, since carefully placed nuances of color soften the stark contrasts and lend a feeling of harmony. The parallels to Hermann-Josef Kuhna’s treatment of color are obvious.
There are perhaps further parallels to be found in the painterly technique that lends van Gogh’s late works their distinctive style. By setting rapid strokes of color side by side, he created a vividly animated structure for each composition. In Saint-Rémy, where he was treated in a private psychiatric clinic, he began to lend these “jottings” a rhythm of their own, forming waves and circles and spirals. Again, the parallels to Kuhna’s work are self-evident. One might even argue that Van Gogh was unconsciously pushing his technique toward abstraction, while Kuhna has moved beyond abstraction. Critics who comment on his works - including the present author - regularly grasp for metaphor in order to clarify their effect. Or they search for antecedents among the pointillists or among contemporary pixel-artists like Petrus Wandrey, Holger Bär and Volker Hildebrandt. Such comparisons are reasonable, sometimes even instructive, yet they ultimately fail to account for the lushness and opulence, the discipline and logic, the sensuousness and sensibility that inform this unique oeuvre.
David Galloway, 2009