Martin Roman Deppner 1995
Mirrored from the head
Mirrored from the head
German Verrsion below
How can one paint the sensing of sensory activity? Dagmar Rauwald's gaze is directed inwards in order to be able to cast outwards what is happening in the eye and ear, brain and genitals, on the tongue and the root of the nose, what activates the senses even before consciousness has stirred. It circles around that interface of human existence where reflexes have not yet turned into reflection, but nevertheless embody an order whose interconnectivity is constantly exposed to explorations, both scientific and increasingly artistic.
In Dagmar Rauwald's paintings, this search leads to a pictorial order that tames the flow of colour into an opaque layering, as it were retracing and visualising that process in painting that allows bodily fluids to coagulate into solid organs. In addition, she marks the transition to disembodiment, which turns the body into a sign carrier for other experiences, where the flowing body is transformed into a solid, alien and physical one. What is meant is that entry into language which is connected with a separation from the mother's body and on the basis of which corporeality returns on the level of the linguistic body in rhythm, gestures and voice, for example.
In Dagmar Rauwald's works, the linguistic body corresponds to a body of colour whose own life is constituted by the fact that it attempts to locate and mirror the invisible, the intangible of the body in the same way that it materialises it through artistic shaping (by means of the rhythm and gesture of painting) and thereby releases it semiotically. The palpation of the phenomena within thus also causes a palpation of the painterly possibilities, which conquer their own terrain simply because of the colour density, which does not neglect any nuance of the picture surface.
Accordingly, the paintings do not become reflections that mediate between inside and outside in order to counter the material surface of corporeality, which can be experienced as a reflection, with the illusion of wholeness through insights into an inner image. The explorations of the body's functions and characteristics, which are not infrequently described as the metaphorical seat of soul, spirit, mind or psyche, localised in heart and brain, belly and head, break open between the body's interrogation and the body of colour in order to paint in a third: reflections of the repressed, inscriptions that have turned the body into a scene of memory performances. Permanent traces are painted in the subconscious, resulting from experiences of pain and pleasure, which, like the passing on of gestures, have proved to be a powerful aid to memory (Nietzsche).
Only this dimension gives the valorisation of matter a structure that undermines the image and is analogous to the body. Once again: Dagmar Rauwald's tracing denies itself a depictive equivalent of body exploration by piercing the solidified pictoriality and penetrating to matter in the sense of a developable substance. This process is achieved by means of a spatula-like mass of paint that has been applied and removed, evoking injuries as well as scarring, constrictions as well as openings.
The sensual feeling of the body, tense in the abstract relationship between colour compression and colour space, is furthermore transformed into an ambivalent sign, which additionally charges the body trace with imaginative, i.e. pictoriality that goes beyond the boundaries of body orientation, by virtue of its colourfulness of blue, violet, green, orange and other mixed tones of a multi-layered colour fixation, broken into white and black and not infrequently shining through from the lower layers of colour.
Set in colour in this way, the electronic atlas of the human body also becomes a source of inspiration attached to the signs and retrievable in the paintings. The artificial colour image of the "nuclear spin tomography", which virtually visualises the path of sensory reaction thanks to thousands of data from the organic recording to the brain, has been viewed by the painter. The result: an artificiality mirrored in the picture collides with a painting gesture generated from bodily emotions that is as large-format as it is colourful. Confronted and yet related to each other in this way is the tremendous constructional capacity of the human brain, reflected in the storage of data, and the creative handwriting of the direct access to the phenomena of the body (admittedly broken by media), proceeding with seemingly archaic means such as paint and painting tools. Once again, we encounter the interface between corporeality and reification, in which the constructability of the image is ultimately answered by the materiality of the paint material: "Naked elements, simple and absolute, bubbles or ulcers of being" (Levinas).
In Dagmar Rauwald's paintings, this search leads to a pictorial order that tames the flow of colour into an opaque layering, as it were retracing and visualising that process in painting that allows bodily fluids to coagulate into solid organs. In addition, she marks the transition to disembodiment, which turns the body into a sign carrier for other experiences, where the flowing body is transformed into a solid, alien and physical one. What is meant is that entry into language which is connected with a separation from the mother's body and on the basis of which corporeality returns on the level of the linguistic body in rhythm, gestures and voice, for example.
In Dagmar Rauwald's works, the linguistic body corresponds to a body of colour whose own life is constituted by the fact that it attempts to locate and mirror the invisible, the intangible of the body in the same way that it materialises it through artistic shaping (by means of the rhythm and gesture of painting) and thereby releases it semiotically. The palpation of the phenomena within thus also causes a palpation of the painterly possibilities, which conquer their own terrain simply because of the colour density, which does not neglect any nuance of the picture surface.
Accordingly, the paintings do not become reflections that mediate between inside and outside in order to counter the material surface of corporeality, which can be experienced as a reflection, with the illusion of wholeness through insights into an inner image. The explorations of the body's functions and characteristics, which are not infrequently described as the metaphorical seat of soul, spirit, mind or psyche, localised in heart and brain, belly and head, break open between the body's interrogation and the body of colour in order to paint in a third: reflections of the repressed, inscriptions that have turned the body into a scene of memory performances. Permanent traces are painted in the subconscious, resulting from experiences of pain and pleasure, which, like the passing on of gestures, have proved to be a powerful aid to memory (Nietzsche).
Only this dimension gives the valorisation of matter a structure that undermines the image and is analogous to the body. Once again: Dagmar Rauwald's tracing denies itself a depictive equivalent of body exploration by piercing the solidified pictoriality and penetrating to matter in the sense of a developable substance. This process is achieved by means of a spatula-like mass of paint that has been applied and removed, evoking injuries as well as scarring, constrictions as well as openings.
The sensual feeling of the body, tense in the abstract relationship between colour compression and colour space, is furthermore transformed into an ambivalent sign, which additionally charges the body trace with imaginative, i.e. pictoriality that goes beyond the boundaries of body orientation, by virtue of its colourfulness of blue, violet, green, orange and other mixed tones of a multi-layered colour fixation, broken into white and black and not infrequently shining through from the lower layers of colour.
Set in colour in this way, the electronic atlas of the human body also becomes a source of inspiration attached to the signs and retrievable in the paintings. The artificial colour image of the "nuclear spin tomography", which virtually visualises the path of sensory reaction thanks to thousands of data from the organic recording to the brain, has been viewed by the painter. The result: an artificiality mirrored in the picture collides with a painting gesture generated from bodily emotions that is as large-format as it is colourful. Confronted and yet related to each other in this way is the tremendous constructional capacity of the human brain, reflected in the storage of data, and the creative handwriting of the direct access to the phenomena of the body (admittedly broken by media), proceeding with seemingly archaic means such as paint and painting tools. Once again, we encounter the interface between corporeality and reification, in which the constructability of the image is ultimately answered by the materiality of the paint material: "Naked elements, simple and absolute, bubbles or ulcers of being" (Levinas).
Martin Roman Deppner 1995
Aus dem Kopf gespiegelt
Wie kann man das Erfühlen von Sinnesaktivitäten malen? Dagmar Rauwalds Blick ist nach Innen gerichtet um nach Außen werfen zu können, was in Auge und Ohr, Gehirn und Genital, auf Zunge und Nasenwurzel sich ereignet, was Sensorien aktiviert, noch bevor Bewußtsein sich regt. Sie umkreistjene Schnittstelle menschlicher Existenz, wo die Reflexe noch nicht zur Reflexion übergegangen sind, gleichwohl eine Ordnung verkörpern, deren Vernetzungsfähigkeit beständig Erkundungen ausgesetzt ist, wissenschaftlichen wie zunehmend auch künstlerischen.
In den Gemälden Dagmar Rauwalds führt diese Suche zu einer Bildordnung, die den Farbenfluß zu einer opaken Schichtung bändigt, gleichsam jenen Prozeß im Malen nachvollziehend und vergegenwärtigend, der die Körperflüssigkeiten zu festeren Organen gerinnen läßt. Zudem markiert sie damit den Übergang zur Entleibung, der den Körper zum Zeichenträger für andere Erfahrungen macht, wo der fließende Körper in einen festen, fremden und physikalischen transformiert wird. Gemeint ist jener Eintritt in die Sprache, der mit einer Trennung vom Körper der Mutter verbunden ist und aufgrund dessen die Leiblichkeit auf der Ebene des Sprachkörpers zurückkehrt in Rhythmus, Gestik und Stimme z. B..
Dem Sprachkörper entspricht in den Arbeiten Dagmar Rauwalds ein Farbkörper, dessen Eigenleben sich dadurch konstituiert, daß er das NichtSichtbare, das Nicht-Greifbare des Leibes ebenso zu orten, zu spiegeln versucht, wie er es durch eine künstlerische Formung (mittels Rhythmus und Gestik des Malens) materialisiert und dadurch semiotisch freisetzt. Das Ertasten der Phänomene im Inneren bewirkt so auch ein Ertasten der malerischen Möglichkeiten, die allein aufgrund der keine Nuance der Bildfläche vernachlässigenden Farbdichte eigenes Terrain erobern.
Die Gemälde werden dementsprechend nicht zu Spiegelungen, die zwischen Innen und Außen vermitteln, um der als Zerspiegelung erfahrbaren materiellen Oberfläche der Leiblichkeit die Illusion von Ganzheitlichkeit durch Einsichten in ein inneres Bild entgegenzusetzen. Die Erkundungen der Funktionsweisen und Merkmale des Körpers, die nicht selten als metaphorischer Sitz von Seele, Geist, Gemüt oder Psyche beschrieben werden, lokalisiert in Herz und Hirn, Bauch und Kopf brechen zwischen Körperbefragung und Farbkörper auf, um ein Drittes einzumalen: Spiegelungen des Verdrängten, Einschreibungen, die den Körper zu einem Schauplatz von Gedächtnisleistungen haben werden lassen. Ermalt sind Dauerspuren im Unterbewußtsein, resultierend aus Schmerz- und Lusterfahrungen, die sich ebenso wie das Weitergeben von Gebärden als ein mächtiges Hilfsmittel der Erinnerung (Nietzsche) erwiesen haben.
Erst diese Dimension gibt der Aufwertung der Materie eine das Bild untergrabende, dem Leib analoge Struktur. Nochmals: Dagmar Rauwalds Spurenlegung versagt sich einer abbildenden Entsprechung von Leiberkundung, indem sie die verfestigte Bildlichkeit durchstößt und zur Materie im Sinne einer entwickelbaren Substanz vordringt. Erreicht wird dieser Vorgang mittels gespachtelter, auf- und abgetragener Farbmasse, Verletzungen ebenso wie Vernarbungen, Einzwängungen ebenso wie Öffnungen evozierend.
Das sinnliche Körpergefühl, in die abstrakte Beziehung zwischen Farbverdichtung und Farbraum verspannt, wird darüber hinaus in ein ambivalentes Zeichen transformiert, das die Körperspur zusätzlich mit imaginierender, d.h. die Grenzen der Leiborientierung sprengender Bildlichkeit auflädt kraft ihrer nicht der Leiblichkeit entnommenen Farbigkeit der blauen, violetten, grünen, orangenen und anderer in Weiß und Schwarz gebrochener, nicht selten aus unteren Farbschichten durchscheinender Mischtöne einer mehrlagigen Farbbefestigung.
Dergestalt in Farbe gesetzt, gelangt auch der elektronische Atlas des menschlichen Körpers zu einer den Zeichen beigefügten, in den Gemälden abrufbaren Inspirationsquelle. Das künstliche Farbbild der "Kernspintomographie", das den Weg der Sinnesreaktion Dank tausender Daten von der organischen Aufnahme bis zum Gehirn virtuell anschaulich werden läßt, ist von der Malerin eingesehen worden. Resultat: Eine ins Bild gespiegelte Künstlichkeit stößt auf eine aus Körperregungen erzeugte, ebenso großformatige wie farbgewaltige Malgeste. Konfrontiert und doch aufeinander bezogen ist auf diese Weise die in der Datenspeicherung sich niederschlagende ungeheure Konstruktionsfähigkeit des menschlichen Gehirns und die kreatürliche Handschrift des mit archaisch anmutenden Mitteln wie Farbe und Malwerkzeuge vorgehenden, unmittelbaren Zugriffs auf die (freilich medial gebrochenen) Phänomene des Leibes. Wir begegnen abermals der Schnittstelle von Leiblichkeit und Verdinglichung in der letztendlich die Konstruierbarkeit des Bildes mit der Stofflichkeit der Farbmaterie beantwortet wird: "Nackte Elemente, einfach und absolut, Blasen oder Geschwüre des Seins" (Levinas).