Layering and Dividing – Notes on the work of Frank Piasta by Rainhard Ermen (2008)

The paint seems to project toward the viewer. Its volume is unmistakable and downright ­tangible, like a bodily vis-à-vis. At times it seems every bit as thick as the wood panel to which it is applied. The volume becomes even more apparent when the base is merely a thin sheet of aluminium, one mounted, to boot, at a distance from the wall. Though stabilized, the paint floats by itself, as it were, and makes the picture just by its patent materiality.
Add to that the productive paradox that, owing to its transparency, the paint, while spread out in appropriate massiveness, has nevertheless a curious element of lightness. The colour is encased in a glassy body and as it were tempered by that body. The transparency is accompanied by a slight clouding. The more thickly the mass is modelled, the stronger the particular colour tone manifests itself.
In line with the relief of this type of painting, areas of concentration and open places are formed, which by means of a few layers – generally no more than three – are built into bizarre, downright anarchical, mixtures. This kind of work, with its sometimes impure, earthy-synthetic, not to say exterritorial, colours, does not cosy up to the viewer. The material is allowed to get out of control. The foundation clearly shines through at the thin spots: white priming, the silver of the aluminium, or a warm, brassy mirror base. Then again the paint may be so sparingly measured and applied only in a single layer that it disturbs the glassy clouding like an elusive shadow.

From the start, Frank Piasta aimed at such painting per se. He carefully picked his teachers at the academy accordingly: Gotthard Graubner in Düssel­dorf, and then Kuno Gonschior in Berlin, both of whom he likes to acknowledge as his masters. His independent work commenced about 1999, when he discovered and first experimented with silicon, a material ­better known to the trades and to plastic surgery than to the pictorial artist. It is this material, composed of a mixture of inorganic and organic substances, that enables the effects described at the outset. Although at first glance the pictures may appear as if done with acrylic, silicon is far removed from the latter?s combination of brilliance and cold precision, and not only in terms of its transparency. The material, besides offering the eye a fresh ­experience, is intrinsically attractive. The viewer is tempted to explore the pictorial surfaces tactilely. Actual touch would convey the impression of a consistency at once firm and flexible, a corporeality that is artificial yet fleshy and seeming to emit a warmth of its own. This ambiguous materiality, however ascertained, will bury itself into the subconscious of any viewer who does not just turn away.

Whoever lets himself get involved with art, especially with painting, which comes along so very principled, is really always forced to decide: yes or no? No evasion is possible. The picture represents itself, the medium is (almost) the work, discovered and invented by an omnipotent conceptual organizer. He spreads the material over the base with a wide doctor blade or scraper, applying the several layers, and decides on the colorations. He works with the stubbornness of the silicon mass, he partially smoothes over the unevennesses that are due to the modelling process with the next layer. The push of the scraper produces horizontal indentions, not to mention the bulge that may form at the bottom edge. At times some scenic associations may arise. However, this is no longer painting of the traditional subtlety, since, for one thing, the brush, the classic artist?s tool with its centuries-old trace, is absent. The result, rather, is an autonomous kind of painting-as-such, one that is organized according to its own laws. Its level of abstraction is a function of handling the material; its effect is ­correspondingly immediate.

Recently Frank Piasta has begun to move beyond the monological, chromatic colour panels that constitute more than 80% of his work. He isolates gestures that have not appeared in this way in his work before. One may find, say, a typical brushwork patch of paint, or a folded block, or a dwarf-like hillock – sculpture more than painting. He works with tilting planes, onto which these elements are placed in such a way that they are forced almost violently and yet elegantly into the plane of the panel picture. His most extensive experiment with these elements is a work consisting of several hundred parts, which are derived from a few modules and in each case are set freely in space or on the floor. Disposition and spread of the parts are decided at each venue according to the local givens, though a binding overall structure remains in place. Silicon as a material makes possible this new upright gait of gestures, which enters a basic dialogue with Piasta?s (classic) panel pictures. A third-stage synthesis is not in view: painting advances claims and calls itself fruitfully into question, at issue being, to cite the title of an exhibition, "layering and dividing". Within the framework of a comprehensive installation, an exhibition, both moments come together. The artist is expanding his horizon, opening up his work, experimenting.

Translated from the German by Ernest Bernhardt