I WAS ON THE LUNAR SURFACE
Painting, Abstract informal, Acrylic, 180x130cm
Traps for the Eyes
Observing Wolfgang Zingerle’s oeuvre from an ideal theoretic distance we notice that on the one
hand, his research proceeds contemporaneously along parallel binaries. Superficially, we could call
them paintings, sculptures, or installations. On the other hand, time does not count for much within
the organisation of this productive stream.
It is a rare occurrence, and therefore quite difficult to identify a language “evolution”, a progress or
regress in the work of this South Tyrolean artist. On the contrary, and despite appearances, his work
seems to be “born adult” and maintains, from one technique to the other, an admirable internal
coherence, a remarkable capacity of constantly renewed words and approaches to modalities,
without neglecting the underlying issues.
To examine for example the work in painting, so-called tableaux. Zingerle has taken the gesture, as
mentioned above, of the late informal painting of Abstract Expressionism. Only then did he find
out, almost immediately, that the formulation of subjectivity, the sensible, solipsistic but
aesthetically repaying craving, as various expressions of the “self”, did not interest him. Therefore
the artist started to dedicate himself to the study of ancient preparations, to traditional medieval and
Renaissance techniques, for wooden but also for canvas-based works. At the end, as the physical
and metaphorical “deepening” became exhausted, for once there was no more need of the surface,
since the artist was already below it. The surface had already begun to well up on its own, due to the
reactions of oxidation and the natural evolution of the patina. Thus, it makes sense to speak not so
much of materials as of reagents, to speak not so much of painting but instead of a controlled
experiment employing a chemical process.
In this way, the work ends up again immersed in an atmosphere of relations between things, even if
it finally evokes an aesthetic experience, not only of colours (as there are beautiful colours, nuances
and compositions to experience) but also of landscape. Sometimes this is evoked by titles like The
Sea and the Sky are Divided (2001), or I Was on the Lunar Surface, developed exactly ten years
after the first named.
In other words, the landscape is not there: it has not been painted but only suggested, for example
by streams of colours that remind one of cascades, or by a horizontal line that suggests the horizon
to our eye, which looks for certainties and guarantees. They are indeed “tableaux”, their
configurations only apparently “abstract” or distant memories of far-away landscapes. In reality,
they are the result of the accurate observation of the artist, and the controlled manifestation of those
substances or, if one prefers, “reagents” that the artist has utilized in that circumstance in his work.
Observing Wolfgang Zingerle’s oeuvre from an ideal theoretic distance we notice that on the one
hand, his research proceeds contemporaneously along parallel binaries. Superficially, we could call
them paintings, sculptures, or installations. On the other hand, time does not count for much within
the organisation of this productive stream.
It is a rare occurrence, and therefore quite difficult to identify a language “evolution”, a progress or
regress in the work of this South Tyrolean artist. On the contrary, and despite appearances, his work
seems to be “born adult” and maintains, from one technique to the other, an admirable internal
coherence, a remarkable capacity of constantly renewed words and approaches to modalities,
without neglecting the underlying issues.
To examine for example the work in painting, so-called tableaux. Zingerle has taken the gesture, as
mentioned above, of the late informal painting of Abstract Expressionism. Only then did he find
out, almost immediately, that the formulation of subjectivity, the sensible, solipsistic but
aesthetically repaying craving, as various expressions of the “self”, did not interest him. Therefore
the artist started to dedicate himself to the study of ancient preparations, to traditional medieval and
Renaissance techniques, for wooden but also for canvas-based works. At the end, as the physical
and metaphorical “deepening” became exhausted, for once there was no more need of the surface,
since the artist was already below it. The surface had already begun to well up on its own, due to the
reactions of oxidation and the natural evolution of the patina. Thus, it makes sense to speak not so
much of materials as of reagents, to speak not so much of painting but instead of a controlled
experiment employing a chemical process.
In this way, the work ends up again immersed in an atmosphere of relations between things, even if
it finally evokes an aesthetic experience, not only of colours (as there are beautiful colours, nuances
and compositions to experience) but also of landscape. Sometimes this is evoked by titles like The
Sea and the Sky are Divided (2001), or I Was on the Lunar Surface, developed exactly ten years
after the first named.
In other words, the landscape is not there: it has not been painted but only suggested, for example
by streams of colours that remind one of cascades, or by a horizontal line that suggests the horizon
to our eye, which looks for certainties and guarantees. They are indeed “tableaux”, their
configurations only apparently “abstract” or distant memories of far-away landscapes. In reality,
they are the result of the accurate observation of the artist, and the controlled manifestation of those
substances or, if one prefers, “reagents” that the artist has utilized in that circumstance in his work.
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