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Björn Egging

Subjective Rationality
On Karl Martin Holzhäuser's pictorial worlds.
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In: Karl Martin Holzhäuser
Lichtmalerei 2002|2003|2004
Catalogue: Exhibition Licht-Bilder
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 2004
"My current work has got little to do with photography in the customary sense." [1]
These words by Karl Martin Holzhäuser, a professor of photography at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, clarify that he deliberately continues to refrain from dealing with the two key features of conventional photographic picture generation, namely, the reproduction of the external physical world with the aid of a camera. His paintings with light are done without an optical apparatus or a concrete motif. His pictures, usually large and square-shaped, display colored or grayish stripes of varying width and length, structures of fine lines and solid bars that fill the whole format or are arranged in balanced compositions. They do not reproduce the visible world; they are literally "photo-graphs", painted with light [2]. That doesn't mean that they don't depict anything. Their underlying concept, the notion of a picture as an autonomous work of art in its own right, has been established in painting at least since the days of the avant-garde, and was introduced into the field of photography in successive stages of generating objectless images. This particular development began with Alvin Langdon Coburn's and Paul Strand's first abstract experiments, was continued by Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Christian Schad with their photograms, and extends into so-called subjective or generative photography [3].
Holzhäuser's technical procedure, essentially the same in all of his recent and present work, is both simple and elaborate: Operating in total darkness, he moves a "light-brush" (a lamp inside a narrow oblong box with variable openings in the bottom) along horizontal and vertical rails over sensitized paper, thus exposing it directly, without an interfering lens. Small parallel slides in the bottom of this "brush" enable the artist to control the quantity of light emerging from his device: As long as all the slides are shut, no lamplight is being emitted; when several slides are opened simultaneously, separate parts of the sensitized paper become exposed at one go, whereby the individual slots determine the width of the resulting stripes or bars. With regard to the slides and the intensity of light and colors, the "painter" starts out from a plan, but another important aspect, the speed of the moving "light-brush", is usually governed by intuition during the actual exercise. At any rate, Holzhäuser does not get to see the outcome before the development is completed (and even later if color is involved and the pictures have to be processed in a laboratory). Now and then the result turns out to be somewhat other than expected, but he accepts exactly that as part of the charm of his artistic method.
He does invite "calculated chance", but the programmatic and conceptual parts of his work are, of course, rooted in the creative techniques of generative photography. And although, over several decades, the influence of Max Bense's normative aesthetics (a subject matter Holzhäuser cherished while studying at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts) has continuously given way to increasing spontaneity, the present artist still specifies the exact sequence of what he wants to do in a kind of musical score. After all, he is going to work in the dark, and he wants to minimize the imponderables that might interfere with his intentions. On the other hand, there is the persistent importance of the manual gesture: "It's not only a program that guides me; momentary feelings also matter a lot." [4] This discrepancy between a strictly calculated program and its manual execution has often been regarded as Holzhäuser's hallmark [5]. Let us now consider the creative results of his method.
"My pictures don't show anything apart from themselves." [6]
At first sight, Holzhäuser's paintings with light impress by their precision suggesting a technical approach. Their structures of lines and planes, fine halftones and sometimes corporeal shapes hardly reveal that they are only partly machine-made, that they have been created in a darkroom by means of a hand-held device. On closer inspection, however, their singularity becomes apparent, and since there are no negatives to make prints off, each of them is unique. Their constructivist composition reminds one of works by Walter Dexel or Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, and they display some of the meticulous craftsmanship of the great avant-gardists where a stripe is not completely straight or a shade of gray gets slightly dispersed on account of a touch too much light. Many planar sections manifest, unlike the smooth surfaces of comparable op-art pieces, a velvety materialness that evokes a three-dimensional effect and positions these pictures in the vicinity of color-field painting, an art movement that has exerted a certain influence on Holzhäuser. However, his artistic paragons are Rupprecht Geiger, Gotthard Graubner, James Turrell, and above all Mark Rothko. In their work he finds "color structures that express thoughts" (of a viewer's as well as of the artist's).
A comparison of Holzhäuser's current production with the mechano-optical research he conducted in the early 1970s yields resemblances: Then, he employed photographic means in order to convert distinct color fields into blurred images whose contours were only vaguely reminiscent of their original materialness. Presently, one might say, he realizes the same idea in the opposite direction: Now abstract structures transcend themselves by evoking impressions of spatiality and figurativeness although they don't really "represent" anything. In fact, the artist is exploring the historical basics of painting such as the line, the plane, colors, and contrast.
With regard to certain creative phases, Holzhäuser finds a kindred spirit at work in none other than Gerhard Richter. Indeed, both of them continuously scrutinize the syntax of their specific modes of artistic expression: Gerhard Richter has examined the challenges of photography from a painter's point of view, and conversely one might say that Holzhäuser's paintings with light use photographic means in dealing with a painter's problems [7].
"The only things I care about are those that bring something new into this world." [8]
One may wonder whether Holzhäuser's filigreed all over patterns are meant to remind us of close-up zooms of objects like the facades of modern buildings, of microscopic botanical or electronic structures; and should it be entirely beside the point to associate his constructivist pieces with, for instance, informational bar graphs? Apparently, the artist takes such figurations in stride, but they are not intended. At any rate, we are brought face-to-face with the visualization of material that is usually invisible to the human eye or has not the least counterpart in physical reality. For example, in 1991 Holzhäuser did one of his "paintings" by intuitively moving his "light-brush" to the music of Mozart's Divertimento No. 3 in B flat major [9]. The result looks somewhat like a sonogram, an image produced by ultrasound; it is purely graphic, it does not originate in anything tangible, and therefore it lacks any representative function. Far from setting out to imitate scientific procedures for visualizing something, Holzhäuser chose music as a stimulus for his artistic endeavour to achieve a visual analogue to an acoustic model. In point of fact, he is accustomed to practicing this kind of personal expression as a jazzman playing the trumpet; he knows that, while a piece can be based on a score, inspired music requires not only technical brilliance, but also improvisation.
Relying on a comparatively limited gestural repertoire, Holzhäuser nevertheless aims at deriving as many variations as possible from the application of his individual method of photographic picture generation with its established and well-defined norms. One might even say he is trying to discover a metaphysical constant underneath the level of rationality. His paintings with light share a transcendent feature with many works of informel; in this respect he is quite close to, for example, Pierre Soulages.
In the last analysis Holzhäuser's paintings with light, although they may induce a viewer to recall pictures stored in his mind, present themselves as autonomous and self-contained pictorial worlds without any intentional reference to the sphere of reality. Their impact results from the interaction of all factors involved in their production, namely, photographic technique, subjective control, and an element of chance. These works do not deny their roots in information theory and normative aesthetics, but they apply these concepts so undogmatically that phrases like "scientification of aesthetics" or "quantifiability of art" become entirely irrelevant. By freely handling his photographic means, Karl Martin Holzhäuser creates pictures that, even if they elicit manifold associations, have brought "something new into this world".
(Translated by Helge Jan Schmodde)
[1] A remark made by Holzhäuser during a dialogue with the author on May 18, 2004 in Bielefeld.
[2] Lexikon der Kunst, vol. 5, Munich 1996, p 578.
[3] Cf Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen: "The question of the reality and specific nature of a photographic picture becomes a radical one when photography itself abstains from fulfilling its earliest assignment, the reproduction of the outside world, and no longer accepts as its goal the representation of a motif; exactly this refusal is the point of a productive photography." In: "Bildautonomie. Fotos aus neuen Welten", in: Das Foto als autonomes Bild. Experimentelle Gestaltung 1839-1989, edited by Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen, Gottfried Jäger, and J. A. Schmoll gen. Eisenwerth, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle Bielefeld and Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Stuttgart 1989, p 13. On the development of abstract (or, more precisely, abstracting) photography most recently: Die Kunst der abstrakten Fotografie, edited by Gottfried Jäger, Stuttgart 2002; Abstrakte Fotografie, edited by Thomas Kellein and Angela Lampe, exhibition catalogue, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000.
[4] See footnote [1].
[5] Cf, for example, Jörg Boström, in: Lichtmalerei. Neue Arbeiten, exhibition catalogue, Bielefeld 1990, p 14: "What lends excitement and unmistakable individuality to his work is precisely the combination of subjective handwriting, photochemical process, and mathematically planned procedure."
[6] See footnote [1].
[7] According to Jörg Boström, Holzhäuser "is both an analyst and a constructivist in that he disassembles the possibilities of photography in order to make use of its constituent parts in his compositions". Jörg Boström, "Fotobilder aus erster Hand", in: Konkrete Gesten, exhibition catalogue, Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Herford, Bielefeld 1995, p 34.
[8] See footnote [1].
[9] This work is displayed in: Mit der Absicht des Schöpfers hat es höchstens zufällig etwas zu tun, edited by Jörg Boström and Karsten Moll, exhibition catalogue, Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Herford, Bielefeld 1991, pp 29-31.

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Lichtmalerei 180.18.2003

2003
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2003
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1992
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