Publikationen

Martin Vosswinkel

What an artist needs is the temperament of a reporter, a journalist,
but in a grand sense of these words,
perhaps forgotten today.

Yves Klein, 1961

With these words, Yves Klein, the legendary French "Artist of the Void", provides us with an important key to understanding the enigmatic role of the artist - indeed of art itself - in contemporary society. His series of "Cosmogonies", imprints of natural elements and climatic conditions on sheets of canvas prepared with dry pigment, bear witness to the vital forces of nature and the cosmic reality of life itself. Without intending it, indeed without even being conscious of it, Martin Voßwinkel has fulfilled Klein's prerequisite for making art, that is to say, like Klein, Voßwinkel presents us with traces of the production of his art and in doing so provides evidence to his intimate relationship to nature as the mother of all artistic media.

In addition to conventional, store-bought pigments, Martin Voßwinkel uses various natural elements to create abstract compositions which, in turn, refer back to patterns and constellations found in nature. Like Yves Klein before him, Voßwinkel has entered into an intimate dialogue with nature, employing sand, earth, ashes and oxidised metals in an attempt not to illustrate nature, but rather to present and bear witness to its very state of being. The compositions which result have little to do with Minimalism or Colour Field Painting; indeed, what the German artist has accomplished here is best described as Maximalism. He is not concerned with the play of forms as forms or the effects of colour as colour - that is to say, we are not dealing with "art for art's sake" in the traditional sense of the expression. On the contrary, Voßwinkel presents us with "art for the sake of art", whereby art cannot be distinguished from life and nature, but is rather an integral part of both. Art = Life = Nature = Art.

"A central theme of my artistic work in natural environments, as well as in my installations and paintings, is the theme of solidarity or connection. In this context, connection means for me not only being connected; it is more than mere communication, it is the suspension of separate-ness and the creation of a foundation to facilitate a new encounter between man and nature, between man and his own nature." It is seldom that the intentions of an artist, regardless of how noble or clearly stated, are so easily, indeed immediately legible in his works of art. Through his deeply personal encounters with nature, whereby he never leaves his own mark, but rather allows nature to speak for itself, Martin Voßwinkel has achieved a rare state of symbiosis with the world around him. It is never an exploitation of nature, but rather a revelation of its inner structures and processes. Brown is not just a colour, but an element of nature. Rust is not a pigment, but a natural process. The layers of pigment on paper or canvas are not stripes, but sedimentary lines, the evidence of the life cycle of organic and inorganic matter. Voßwinkel's medium is not the material of nature as such, but rather the materia of nature, its being. This is what he shares with Yves Klein, as well as with artists as varied as Joseph Beuys, Kazimir Malevich and Richard Long. Each of these artists is, in the words of Yves Klein, a "journalist in the grand sense of the term". Their works are journals of encounters. They represent the unification of art and life; they are not art about nature, but rather the art of nature.

Gérard A. Goodrow, Cologne - Translation: Stefanie Steindor