Color-Confectionery. Remarks on the series gedoppelte mitte fuzzy by Frank Piasta

"The form and the color dont mix  (rather) there is simultaneity"
Georges Braques, Cahiers (1917-1947)

It lays there, the color, almost as if on a serving tray or the proverbial silver platter. Presented like this all attention is drawn to it. It finds itself under, over, or next to shards of mirror on round tables of varying heights that are also mirrored  its reflection in the surrounding space. The fact that painting is the result of space and light has been explored and demonstrated in various ways in the history of art. And still works like gedoppelte mitte fuzzy 2.3 (2019) by Frank Piasta  last shown in the T66 in Freiburg  elicit questions about that, which is shown: Where is this painting located? Is this still painting where no canvas, no exhibition wall, no traditional materials and tools of painting lay a protective hand in front of the artwork? In the course of his artistic work Frank Piasta seems to have managed with fewer and fewer of these lifebouys of art. And maybe concealed in this personal artistic search and (ongoing) development is something true about painting and the (art)image in itself.

Frank Piasta has been working with silicone since the end of the 1990s. To the initially colorless substance he binds pigments, and, in early works, applies the unusual material with a palette knife or scraper in a number of layers to wooden or aluminum carriers. A color- and image-space is formed . These paintings, back then certainly still bound to the traditional form of the rectangle or square and presented on the exhibition wall, characterize themselves through the material properties of the silicone: transparency and lightness, malleability and flexibility for one thing  and then again by its almost solid volume and physicality. Color is therein not just (on) the surface of a picture, but as we can see into the body of the paint, rather has a light and spatial appearance, and is a means to let light and space become visible in the painting.

Mirrors have served the Artist in multiple series as surfaces for the paint. They further strengthen this reflecting, spatial character. Then in the series fuzzy the mass of color does without any sort of base, more specifically the exhibition space itself becomes a three dimensional image carrier, and the application of the paint becomes even more autonomous: hundreds of brush or spatula strokes, small accumulations of colored silicone, drift free across exhibition floors or walls. In blank volume and die schwerkraft ist überbewertet it almost floats in the air. Between panes of glass, two hung on the wall or three placed on the floor and propped against the wall, the paint is caught in the interstice - literally visible in the space and, through the panes of glass, viewable from all directions. The experiment with color and its spatial dimension is pushed even further in the series "gedoppelte mitte fuzzy. There the fleshy-physicality of the paint is virtually dissected  cut up and opened. On the mirrored tables the paint finds itself  sometimes as small cubes, in rough irregularly formed pieces, or in scraps  randomly distributed over the round surface of the table. Unadorned and wild, arbitrary, almost playful, the construction and the arrangement of the crumbs suggests pieces of confectionery.

The sheer limitlessness of the materials of art, as it has been established over the course of Modern Art, and continues today, goes hand in hand with the reflections on what painting, an artwork, or a picture are, and could be. Looking at "gedoppelte mitte fuzzy 2.3" (2019) the material makes it easy to get from the color to the form  or rather to the question where the boundary between painting and sculpture lies or possibly, except in convention, that it no longer exists. The form of the visible paint no longer connotes the (form of the) painting nor the stroke of the painters hand. Instead Piasta used leftover silicone or deconstructed it with a cutting tool. He shows the cut edges of the material, marks from the blade left in the soft plastic. The result is the material presenting itself with all its characteristics, how it was handled, and also the suggestive enabling of the gaze in to the actual interior of the material. On the one hand, the surface of these small, in color thoroughly considered forms, is emphasized; particularly, as these surfaces, their image multiplied by the many mirror shards, are portrayed again and again. The material spheres and tools, their handling, specifically Piasta's technique, are also transformed into new visual connections: The reflections of the color, this physical phenomenon, are downright impressive  through the different angles, the directionality of the mirrors, the mirror-picture-surfaces are projected at multiple points in the room. Quite ironically, there they counteract the presence of the color in the room, where paradoxically the truly colorful objects only appear as dark shadowed spots on the two dimensional light reflections. Nevertheless, the attention is drawn to the surrounding room, and the spatial dimension of the work is emphasized. The quality of the work series gedoppelte mitte fuzzy lies precisely in this; that it shows how color, at the transition between space and surface, can move and sharpen our perception for different dimensions, materiality, and immateriality.

Frank Piasta's works inquire after the possibilities of painting: How can space be experienced through painting? How can an awareness for pictoriality be sharpened through materiality? What is a painting today? Against this backdrop the opening quote by the french cubist Georges Braques (1882 - 1963) makes sense when viewing these works, because the genesis of the image here is thanks to the paint. Which simultaneously is shape in the space and has removed itself from its mimetic function, but still makes reference to it; and is aware of its past. It is a picture that unfolds between color, shape, space, its own image, and its perception. Therefore the viewer is ultimately of vital importance for Piasta's works and exploration of color, because as a seeing, sensory experiencing individual they are called upon to discover all these diverse components; the various ideas of a picture and pictorial quality. If they are successful they gain a valuable visual experience that stands in contrast to the flatness and placelessness of say a smartphone. This is why these artworks are that much more relevant today, perhaps you will also take on this task, to reinforce a materially real world, in the here and now, that considering the increasing importance of the digital domain one tries to reaffirm for oneself.