REDOX OX

Medium:

Oil on canvas stretched over a wooden frame with a plywood panel glued to it

Technique:

Painting with a brush

Shipping:

The work is shipped stretched onto a wooden frame with a glued-on plywood panel – including a certificate of authenticity and signature on the reverse.

This means the canvas is stretched over the plywood panel beneath it. Consequently, the work is heavier and more stable than standard stretcher frames.

REDOX OX draws on a colour scheme inspired by chemical metallic transformation processes; the colour gradients placed side by side sometimes reinforce each other, whilst at other times they contrast in colour. The edges and clean curves of the colour gradient frame are executed with great precision, thereby contrasting with the colour-coordinated yet open-plan background.

This minimalist approach allows space to focus specifically on the individual aspects of the image. The work comes to life through a combination of precision, presence and restraint.

My current aim in my work is to achieve the greatest possible degree of abstraction.

Here is a text that forms the basis for my current series.

Abstraction

Perhaps there is no object in which its de-objectification is not inscribed. Not necessarily as dissolution or final fragmentation, but as a withdrawal from the objectifying gaze. For the object, which in Ancient Greek is called Α ν τ ι κ ε ί με ν (Latin: objectum), marks the counterpart of a (perceiving) subject, which we call the object. It stands opposite, forms an opposition and, in doing so, is constituted not only within the subject-object relation; it also proves to be a construct which, like any construction, can be broken down into its constituent parts. This decomposition is inherent within it. Rather than being an act imposed from without, it is a priori inherent in the object’s concreteness. In fact, seeing does not mean exclusively synthesising or assembling in order to constitute concreteness. Seeing equally means analysing, decomposing, splitting and fragmenting. The whole is invisible. Only the decomposing gaze, whose power of separation is tireless, gains concreteness. To do so, it must be sensitive to the fissures that hold the elements of the object together in their difference from one another. This sensitivity also extends to the contingent nature of the composition of the concrete world. Often, the connections between its elements could be different from what they are. Indeed, the concept of de-objectification points to the principle of contingency. Things are as they are, yet they need not be so. Contingency expresses the instability or arbitrariness of the world. It is an ontological indicator of the fragility of the world of things, that is to say, also of its transformability. De-objectification also means: the de-realisation of the real in favour of a reality as yet unknown.

Marcus Steinweg