Series

From my studio located above Lake Maggiore, I look either northwards, in the direction of Switzerland, or southwards, in the direction of Milan. Each time of day or season offers a different picture. The lake is the stage. A new drama is performed every day.

Homecoming signifies a return to the place, where everything started. To come back to the beginning means to me, to return to the region that shaped me: A lake was in front of my childhoods' house. I was able to see the mountains when overlooking this lake, they hid the horizon. In this surrounding I got to know myself.

I open up spaces in paintings. I can open up the closed surface of the white canvas with brush and colour and a high and wide space opens up before my eyes.

South of Rome, in Nemi, there is a sacred Roman site. It is dedicated to the goddess Diana. The Roman Emperor Caligula had two huge ships built there in the first century AD and launched them into the nearby lake. They were sunk after his death and only salvaged from the lake by Mussolini in 1944. The remains of the ships were exhibited in two purpose-built halls. At the end of the Second World War, the ships fell victim to a fire.

My little daughter says, »You paint a painting in a painting in a painting.« And then she repeats: »In a painting in a painting in a painting …«. »Stop«, I say, »you are going to drive me completely crazy«.

»The pictures have to go!« Many iconoclasts have raged over images. The iconoclasm raged in different cultures and at different times. Iconoclasm is a consequence of increasing intellectualisation. (XII Iconoclasm, from Thomas Huber: The Red Frieze)

In my pictures Eros is the concealed cause, the hidden energy, that drives my visual creations.

The horizon separates the visible from the invisible. It is at this borderline that my pictures appear.

Are you in the frame?

The walls tower into the darkness above us. They are cut from the rock, dug out of the stone. Dark layers of sediment run like veins through the lighter layers of rock. Like rivers that left their traces here in prehistoric times, deep under the earth. (PDF of the series)

»If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.« Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Looking at pictures is like travelling in a boat. We look over the edge of the boat into the water below us. Below the surface of the water, we are looking at another world.

The frieze is the theme that runs through these paintings, similar to a melody that repeatedly sounds throughout a piece of music in different variations. The frieze is, essentially, the chosen key, which inscribes its own sound on the piece performed here.

The paintings are here and now, no they are not depictions fo places that are real somewhere else, so that one stands before them with yearning in one’s heart and, oh, one wishes one were there, in that place, which the paintings here only reproduce as reflection. Wrong. This is the place the paintings depict and now is the time they take place in … (Water, Salt, and Paintings)

Sum of angles in the real space: 270°
Sum of angles in the pictorial space: 360°

The depth of a picture is a menacing absyss. One must face it carefully if one is not to fall. Without considerable cau-tion. the making of pictures is a dangerous endeavor. It can cause one to perish. (Theoretical Paintings)

I repeatedly create order here. I consider order in picture to be indispensable. So feel free to call me the caretaker of the picture’s space. Pictures must be clean and orderly. I sweep twice a day; there is nothing worse than unclean areas in a picture. I also hate a picture`s room to be stale, wich is why I air them out once in a while. Other than that, I feel at ease in a picture, I always have something to do. Sometimes, though, it is a bit lonely here.

That is why I say: The painting creates its own world. The place it proposes, the space it depicts, is then the appropriate space for it to appear in. The painting has its place in the painting. It reveals itself in its own condition. The painting is depicted in the painting. It emphasises in itself how it is to be displayed. In what manner, therefore, it should appear before our eyes; this painting proposes its own “coming into the world”. It depicts its own being shown. The painting’s appearance and its appearing are one and the same today. (Talk in the School)

In the beginning water spread out over the entire earth. The first occurrences must have already been reflected in this memory, in the glaring surface which stretched over the entire earth. No one can claim that water has forgotten the first light, which transformed its surface in a shimmering ocean …

The painting’s depth is a dangerous abyss. One has to approach it with measure, in order to not fall into it … (sad facets)

No, you cannot see the painting. By no means can you see the painting. Why can I not see your painting? You would look at it so quickly. I am certain of this, you would look at it so very quickly. Your quick looking would grieve me. You would see the painting, for which I have needed so long, immediately. You would take in with a single glance what I have needed almost an entire life, yes, an entire life. You would look away my life, so very quickly look away. No, I say to you, that would be unbearable for me. I implore you, do not look at the painting. (Paintings Sleep)

Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John,
Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.
(French nursery rhyme)

I walk through my city and ask myself: Is it a city made of paintings that seem like houses, or of houses that promise me they are paintings? Where do I live, I ask myself, the address? It is a painting, as large as a house. (A Painting as Large as a House)

I was a figure of identification. People liked me, audiences streamed into the paintings. We were a successful pair then, you and I, figure and ground. Can you remember? That was a beautiful time, we spent our happiest hours with one another. And today all we have are problems.” We were a problem, you say, the figure-ground problem.

Paintings sleep, he said. Paintings have always slept, as long as he could remember he had always only met paintings that sleep, he said. The momentary, the epochal constitution of paintings was sleep, he said … for this reason this sleepy mood, this tiring sleeping-room mood in the museums, this stillness of sleep in the rooms of the museums. A museum was simply a large place to sleep, a great, abysmal sleep encompassing centuries, he said.

The principal task of paintings is to be a social occasion. One can indeed observe that people always gather when paintings are shown. Is there a more beautiful reason for a painting than to become the occasion for the gathering of many people?

With dismay I see, dear ladies and gentlemen, that you are all already here. We are not yet ready for the opening of the exhibition. You have come too early. You have gathered before the painting, full of expectations. Your gaze is directed at the painting. You are so very there, as though someone had painted your gaze on the walls of the exhibition room. (The Exhibition)

The artist in his studio, the place where he invents and creates paintings, is himself a painting. Perhaps his most essential painting. One, however, that he never paints, but realises with his life. (How Capital is Melted into Soap)

Are we not, artists and bankers, very similar? Changers, money multipliers, gold makers, dazzling speculators of appearance. Maybe even charlatans? Seducers by means of the promise of wondrous multiplication? We both paint the paintings of happier times. We are magicians of appearance. The creators and administrators of the binding values of our times.

Thinking restricts, paintings enrich. That’s why paintings sell so well. Paintings are more beautiful than their owners. (In the evening)

Remember, only the artist is your messenger. He was at all times the ominous transmitter in changing clothes. If you forget, then you are lost without your children’s likeness. Therefore, help him. For some of you still know the names of his ancestors. You succour and care for the artist. Then he will remember and create the paintings so that the lost senses return to you. These paintings, however, conserve the silence. The paintings protect your signs. For the paintings are silent. And only your silence allows the rose to bloom, the night to come, and the day to come again. Silently the paintings save the world. The world owes its continuance to the paintings. Whoever sees these paintings is a witness. And only the witness recognises himself again in his children and remembers the painting of his ancestors. The artist is thus careful that none of the water of life is lost.

The painting preserves the place that has been lost. The saga of the divine origin of beauty dwells in the painting. In the meantime, paintings radiate from far away. (PDF of the series, fr)

When the work is finished, then one has to ensure its preservation. I have packed all the paintings well, put them in boxes, and arranged them in a painting storeroom. They can thus return to their past. Carefully stored and well-identified by a number they remain protected until the moment when their promise can finally be realised.

The collection of texts and images, bound in a substantial number of books, is conceived for the eye. Brought together and arranged, for the eye they are the memory of its talent, encourage trust in its ability of seeing. The library supplies a place for dealing with pictures. It is a refuge for pictures.

One who paints paintings does not think. One measures, narrates, dares. Measurement, number, and weight are the insignia of the melancholic person. Painters have a saturnic disposition. (In the Evening)

If the painting would be water, binding conception, under which all paintings unite …The water’s surface as a place full of metaphors, where a condition begins to exist and another ends. Border between water and air, level of contact of two realms. There I see the paintings. For they are an in-between. Two media come into contact in them. As happens between air and water in the lakes and oceans, large and broad, like the long time that passed since living beings went on land, leaving the water, crossing this border. The water’s surface is the great painting of that place of age-old transformation.

What happens at the copy should be completed in the original painting. (The analogy magic)

Seeing paintings means getting into the water, entering the original flood, gliding along the sparkling, golden light of the water’s surface, looking and reaching what the paintings in their appearance only promised us till now. The meaning of the paintings is recognised, once again in a painting, in an eternal of the bath.

When a painting is exhibited then many people come together. The painting becomes a social event. It does not remain simply the reason for a gathering, rather lends those that have come by a form in which they can encounter each other. A painting, certainly, is a composition. When composed it means only the network formed by those who have come to observe the painting.

One could agree with me that the conventions of a visit resemble an unaffected dealing with paintings much more than many soulless, uneventful encounters in sad art spaces.

Many words are said about pictures. But the pictures are silent.

There should be exuberance around every accomplishment, a loud, communicative: »Look, I did it, rejoice with me how beautiful it turned out!«

So the speaker steps in front of the audience and, surrounded by all the eloquence, it speaks out of him.