MIRROR WINDOWS - ON SKATEMAN AND WONKAWEI

The works by Martin Wehmer can be described as hybrid creatures, and in this regard they definitely bear comparison with those of Gerhard Richter. Like the latter, Martin Wehmer has no declared intentions, follows no system or style; his approach cannot be assigned to any program or stylistic definition. He experiments with the repeated exploration of various artistic media - photography, film and comic - , which he transfers to painterly compositions using alienation, citations and overlaying. Yet in so doing his intention is not to capture the reality content of his pictures but rather to duplicate their inherent uncertainties in order to touch a real beyond or between illusion and reality.

Martin Wehmer's panoramic extended canvases are characterized by a impasto quality that makes you sense the artist's sweeping, energetic motion in applying the paint. The broad stroke of the spatula illustrates the way in which areas of color are distributed across the surface and subsequently in a delibarte yet spontaneous manner enclosed and demarcated again. Able to detect the evolution of the pictures it becomes clear to the viewer that the compositions are not so much the products of spontaneous, impulsive actions but are precisely reflected and created. The color structures created in circular movements overlay and jostle each other mutually as two-dimensional entities. More or less intricately interlocking and overlapping they open up a death that is energetically charged. As a consequence color-form structures evolve that though similar to specific objects or physical concepts do not cite a clearly defined narrative dispositive. A permanent transformation process is set in motion. Color substance dematerializes into energy, which is manifested in energy constellations from which figurative or representational structures emerge. A work group is say determined by a cosmic-looking system that is structured spherically by the trajectories of stars and satellites. The reddish-blue black of the picture ground explores varying sensations of spatial quality or the complete negation of vastness. Out of this darkness circular and oval structures emerge in chain reactions, pulsating they expand in an interplay of polar forces pressing up to the edges of the painting before retreating back into themselves once again.

Often the composition disintegrates to such an extent into ever smaller microstructures and microorganisms that Martin Wehmer seeks to counteract it by imposing some order on th is disintegration. To this end, he superimposes over the mesh of small whirling elements window or mirror-like segments, which present the dynamic action in the underlying layers of the composition as a view or distort large sections of it. In these clearly demarcated picture zones there is the suggestion of shadowy figures and spaces subtly nuanced in grayish-white tones, yet they move in a realm that is beyond logical definition or symbolic understanding. Yet, as if from an incubation room objects and figures also emerge, which - as in a film sequence - penetrate the forcefield of the painting in order to define a sphere of action for themselves or even break out of this system. For instance, 0figur shows a figure that elbows it way out of the frame in a sideways motion. This doughy creature pushes against the actual reflective windows and now strives to develop itself autonomously on the threshold between picture and viewer level. In the process the colorfield structure largely executed in bluish-gray shades is lent the signifiance of a stage setting, which possibly propels this figure and catapults it out of the picture reality. Yet the creature that probably stems from a comic or animation fil remains vague. The deformation of the face with a growth resembling a gas-mask in front of nose and mouth would suggest something like a cyborg, a human-machine hybrid, which leads an unsteady, shadowy existence at the interface of varying reality levels, between abstract visual narrative and visionary comic fantasy.

In skateman the energetically charged space of the picture freezes into a city scene, through which yet another masked figure on a skateboard glides. The crystalline splintered background derives its energy from a glowing colored mechanism that penetrates the picture field from the upper right. The window-like rectangles, that in this case also enclose the protagonist do not so much fulfill the purpose of providing a scenic frame but rather a definite location for the figure floating through the picture field. The impression of a flowing, sliding movement is reinforced by wedge-shaped interlocking structures that push the skater from behind and speed him - as on a sledge - through the picture. The viewer attempts to capture the dreamy face turned towards him by way of a cinematic snapshot. But the skater's black accentuated eyes and the surveillance camera next to him project his gaze - possibly aggressively, yet at least in a reflex movement - back onto himself. The figure appears to embody the forces inscribed in the painting, yet at the same time claims his individuality as a point of friction between picture and viewer reality.

A reversed relationship between energy and matter is suggested in the painting MythosFeldberg. As a miniaturesque cast shadow a black silhouette is lost in the overpowering, vigorously raised color-form structure over which two window-like rectangular structures are superimposed and neutralized in the forger's warm tones. Standing opposite one another they suggest a propeller-like turning motion around the small shadow figure. Since the mirror windows are superimposed over all the layers of the painting a depth is produced that can hardly be defined in relation to reality and portrayal. As if it had escaped from this timeless, placeless realm at the center of the painting - apparently floating, devoid of place or body yet casting a shadow again - a microscopic chimera is generated, which as the focus of the composition substantially absorbs its energies. An additional observation level is opened up through pointed, arrow-like growths, which lend the window shapes the character of speech bubbles and are assigned to the sketchily outlined figure as text like in a comic. But the fields foereseen for this are left empty and only structured using color and brightness modulations. Like an empty monitor screen they suggest a possible option or reading that can only be grasped intuitively.

By contrast, Wonkawai gives the impression that the window or speech bubble motif had changed into a flatscreen that takes up the entire painting. From out of the screen two lovers in tight embrace rise up as three-dimensional figures. As a torso they emerge from the painted surrond - and thus the screen - and seem to achieve an irritating, spherical sculptural effect from all sides. In terms of type the couple recall film protagonists from the 1960s and thus add to the levels of the comic, abstract form and color constellations and figurative associations that of cinematic association. By having the couple break through the frame of the picture composition and thus penetrate into another level of reality Martin Wehmer alludes to the trompe-l'oeil painting tradition, in which say still-life elements throw doubt on the categorical difference between picture and viewer reality through the overlapping and intersection of an illusionist painted frame. But while in the latter the portrayal of animated scenes and human figures was largely avoided here the artist is intent on lending a dynamic impulse to what is actually an intimate scene of a couple kissing. This movement creates the impression of a snapshot captured on the periphery while driving past yet one of particular intensity. At this point a detail of the continually interweaving color formations is focused on as if it were removed from the passage of time and space. The couple resists the tendency towards liquefaction and dematerialization by emerging from the near cinematic continuum of the painting and claiming a physical presence as close as possible to the viewer.

Not in all cases is this concentration or clarification process of concrete and abstract references as clearly formulated. True in the painting guitar the instrument and two hands playing are recognizable. However, this narrative fragment is inseparably embedded in a variously shattered surface structure so that the sculptural object is completely fused into courses of paint and structures. The title alone and the hands that can be detected from a certain perspective allow the identification and further distinction of the painting's layers. It is a definite possibility that the fusing of object and space but also the division of the picture structure into facets in the sense of a synaesthetic tonal experience derives from an exploration of the conept of analytical cubism. But while the latter was intent on breaking up the perspective depiction of space and showing the motif as if from changing perspectives, Martin Wehmer aims at a level beyond this clear assignment of temporal-spatial identity. Applying rational logic he constructs a reality, which can neither be read as unambiguous or narrative or as an abstract dispositive. The composition communicates to the viewer in a sensual, intuitive manner color and tonal moods, which are taken from various reality levels - from film, comic, art-historical topics and actual experiences. Emotional and physical, energy and matter are woven into a continual relationship of exchange. Though owing to this complex merging of reality and abstraction references the aesthetic experience is categorically removed from the contingency of the everyday; simultaneously, in a consciously formulated paradoxon Martin Wehmer calls into question the difference between logic and intuition, aesthetic and practically-oriented perspectives by establishing the one in the other and mutually eliding both.

At any rate, Martin Wehmer's painting are fundamentally connected to one another through the sensation of movement. This dynamism is articulated in the artistic creative process and in the linking of the various painting levels between abstraction and representation. In an almost cinematic analogy the paintings evoke the gaze from a moving train, which racing through the landscape, the city or a tunnel splits the respective surrounding into abstract structures and disintegrates them in energy formations. As in the fast-forward of a film everything concrete or physical loses its consistency so that it can only be seen as an energy process in permanent flux. In a range that is between cinematic and photographic narration, on the one hand, and painterly created autonomy, on the other, we can discern in Martin Wehmer's paintings the concatenation of time and space in the mode of disintegration and refocus, without this interaction ever coming to a standstill that enables its clear definition. However, he does not take up solely or primarily the solution already proposed by the Italian futurists of using painterly devices to express dynamism in picture compositions of a static nature but rather his aim is to merge various manifestions of reality with one another in model situations and as discrete sections. As such, the paintings do not so much make us aware of the conformity of perception but rather their disparity and their inherent multi-dimensional quality. In a way, the motif of the window, mirror or screen surface acts as a back-drop on which the differing facets of viewing reality break in order to be catapulted in an imaginary dimension out of this gray zone into the picture space or alternately from the latter towards the viewer. The vague nature of the mirror level provides a largely neutral empty formula in which the figurative, representational and autonomous color and form constellations, matter and energy, motion and calm find an interface as in a no-man's land for definitions and the symbolical.

Representational and abstract references are not irreconcilable antagonisms in Martin Wehmer's paintings but are brought together experimentally in reflections and refractions so as to establish a relationship of tension and exchange in a transitional situation. This essentially cancels the seeming opposition of virtual and factual reality. Martin Wehmer's attention is not directed towards the nature or sense of reality concepts but more towards the various means of shaping worlds from out of the subjective experience and allowing them to be experienced sensually at various levels. It is here that the artist's positive relationship to a present is expressed, which he reflects on in its historic references but also temporal-spatial dimensions before re-arranging it anew as a structure worthy in its own right - from out of the color in a process of working the substance of the paint. This does not produce an autonomous reality, but one in which the various aspects of reality, of an immanent and transcendent , abstract and specific nature are mixed in a complex manner. And these are revealed in their varying facets depending on the viewer's attitude and associative framework. Perceived on several levels and dimensions Martin Wehmer's painting reveals an intensity of experience that is almost cinematic, and which through leaps in time and space, speeding up and down, transitions from dream and waking state creates its own dimension of reality. Since the viewer is physically and emotionally incorporated into this dynamic and eventful action he becomes aware as if caught in a loop of the condensing potential for creation and change.

Christoph Kivelitz
in catalogue Martin Wehmer 0figur
Dortmunder Kunstverein, 2007