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(Click on thumbnails to enlarge) |
Franco Kappl
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Franco Kappl: New
Paintings Franco Kappl takes his point of departure in the unbroken
tradition of painterly concerns. His continuing involvement
with the easel painting is evidence that the virus of
painting can survive after all in a reputedly hostile
aesthetic environment. What you see on the walls is Kappl's
hypothesis concerning abstraction and gesture, the
fundamental expressive modes of action painting, l'art
informel. |
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Kappl's new canvases show a new thrust. His previous, almost exclusive limitation to black and white has made way for a cautious colorism, introducing gradations of matte blue and ocher, occasional flashes of silver, or a swath of green. While color may supersede black, white remains a constant in this imagery &endash; it continues, in other words, to rely on light-dark contrasts, which indicates that Kappl's conception has not fundamentally changed. Nevertheless, the main concern of his new work is essentially to produce, by purely painterly means, something he defines as condensed drawing. |
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The elements from the realm of graffiti, the calligraphic symbols and word fragments he previously employed to explore the force field between painting and drawing, have become rarer. The recent compositions are dominated by brush drawing in light tones on a coloured ground, runs of poured paint, and torn and collaged bits of printed posters that set grace notes on the encrusted painted surface. Incised lineatures serve to heighten the expressive impetus of the paint application, and emphasize the kinetic energies released in the process. |
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The surface, resulting from a combination of brushwork, scraping, and pouring, is extremely complex, and the sequence of steps used to produce it cannot be determined by looking at the finished picture. The interplay of emergence and withdrawal in this imagery, its tense, nervous, emotionally charged character, exploit the full potential of painting to evoke a dynamic, rhythmic state. |
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Kappl's recent canvases, done over the past year, are energy-charged, rapid, explosive. This may be due in part to the fact that he follows no preconceived intention when painting, forms no mental image of the finished work. Rather than being carefully planned and developed, the image emerges spontaneously, at one go, out of a feeling immediately expressed in gesture. This is a mode of painting that relies strongly on process, including the unpredictable accidents this entails. |
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The canvases nevertheless contain certain points of
reference, in internal framework, a structure within the
open arena of the rectangle. The artist's instinctive
being in the picture is supplemented by a reflective,
ordering aspect of the painting process - what traditionally
is referred to as composition. It would seem that Kappl
paints because he enjoys the craft involved, because he
considers the process to partake more of will than of idea,
as an everyday practice, an aesthetic practice unhampered by
the need to convey profound symbolic meaning, to enlighten,
or to address issues beyond the range of painting. |
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In the 1990s artists reacted to the prophets who proclaimed the death of painting with a flood of imagery that was heterogeneous in the extreme. Countless exhibitions have witnessed to a newfound enjoyment of the painted image, a rediscovery of the joys of sseing. Kappl too has found a reply to the argument that painting is an outmoded historical convention, that if art is to remain viable it must address sociopolitical themes, adopt the new media and technologies, and mount a cultural critique of established institutions. |
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He has replied by turning to an investigation of painting itself, analyzing it into its factors, questioning its historical monopoly, and then, with great diffidence and aplomb, reconstituting the painting process in his own terms. As a thinking, self-aware artist, Kappl investigates the claims and potentials still inherent in gestural abstraction today. He operates on the level where the painting emerges as a material reality, consisting of support, pigment, and painting medium, a reality into which the painter inscribes expressive gestures that record the presence of hand, eye, and mind. |
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Single exhibitions
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Group exhibitions (selected)
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