Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams 

:

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

Technique:

Painting with a brush and oil paint

Shipping:

The work is shipped stretched onto the stretcher frame described above – including a certificate of authenticity and signature on the reverse.

What is it about? The work is part of the ‘TUNING’ series – spanning the period from 2018 to the present day, although the pure colour segments have only come to dominate the ‘TUNING’ series since 2021. The focus is on a gradual abstraction and reduction of the pictorial content, whilst references to natural and man-made phenomena may be discernible in the colour scheme.

‘Sweet Dreams’ is part of a series of small-format works that all share the same basic rectangular composition. In this way, I create a sort of control group in which the pure focus on the various colour gradients comes to the fore and, by eliminating other formal components, leads to a more intense engagement with the pure ‘sound’ of colour. Viewed from a distance, the work can appear like a digital montage in space, and it is only upon closer inspection that its artisanal origins become apparent. The brushstrokes can still be faintly discerned in places. The title hints at a possible origin of the colour combination, though it may also always be a red herring. ‘Sweet Dreams’ is the dancefloor, times gone by, the future, chemistry, and a love of colour.

Digital colour palettes, flip-flop paint finishes from tuned sports cars, sunsets, heavy industry, outer space and reflections in coffee can all find their way into the colour compositions.

The aim of my work at present is to achieve the greatest possible 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 capacity for 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