Johannes Nagel: Field lines at Kunstforum Solothurn, Solothurn

Johannes Nagel: Field lines at Kunstforum Solothurn, 2022

Johannes Nagel: Field lines is on view at Kunstforum Solothurn, Solothurn

May 7 – June 18, 2022

In his early years as a graphic artist, Andy Warhol often worked with what he referred to as the ‘blotted line’ technique. He would make an ink drawing and, while the ink was still wet, place another sheet of paper on the drawing to create a print. The result gives one a sense of the material and has a spontaneous expressiveness, a characteristic line.

Transferred to a three-dimensional space, the ‘silhouettes’ function in a similar manner: In a large sandbox I rotate stencils around their own axes. The outlines of the stencils sketch basic vase-like forms. The shapes that result from the rotations have distinctive forms, but they also clearly manifest their means of production: dragging marks, seams, or discontinuations. Analogous to the ‘blotted lines’, the three-dimensional forms gain self-assertiveness and self-confidence.

The same rhythm-inducing stencils are at times used in the painting of different pieces. The lines, whether sprayed on or traced, follow the silhouette. Then the lines become looser, swerve across the form, break off at the edges and form fault lines, become denser and optically shift the form – not the stringent grid of geography, but more unhampered lines; ones that explore the form, are superimposed, lose themselves and converge again.

Black and blue lines blur slightly and attain a spatial depth through the shadow that the glaze derives from the colour. Brush strokes follow the motion patterns of the arm and give the colour surfaces a direction. The forms beneath the bundled lines become more angular. Nothing inevitable, but the convergence of parallel projects in the studio. Nevertheless, the lines and bundles of lines leap from the smoother form to the angular and find their way over surfaces and indentations.

The lines are at times contemplative, at times constructive, at times ruminative and at times dynamic. Other vase-like forms make their presence known with vivid colours that are arranged on raw porcelain. Not the perfection of the final formulation is the aim, but the formulated idea about the development of the things.

Text by Johannes Nagel

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