Sebastian Ludwig
27 May - 04 Jul 2015
SEBASTIAN LUDWIG
brud
27 May – 4 July 2015
When the samba takes you out of nowhere
And the background's fading out of focus
Yes the picture's changing every moment...
(Roxy Music, Avalon, 1982)
The point of departure is a surface, or rather the supposed impression it makes. A surface left behind by the back of a judo mat. A banal legacy – or at least so it seems. It depends on the perspective one takes on the things seen. For some, the debris accumulated underneath this surface is just dirt. For Sebastian Ludwig, the perception and form of this surface was the beginning of a new series of images. They begin with a process of visual abstraction. Here one eventually moves past the initial associations and, like Ludwig himself, begins to consider the sedimentation of time, which, from a distance, appears on the canvas as a monochromatic whole – a flat surface interwoven with light and shadow whose composition almost seems to be floating above its substrate. Visibly recognizable frameworks instantaneously appear through patches of similar forms and wonder off again just as quickly. As we walk a few steps closer, it becomes clear that a structure is beginning to form. Edges, corners and fine lines form visible grids on the surface of the images, in the very same way that they engraved the structure of the judo mat’s surface into the sedimentation of dust beneath it. The details of what had previously seemed a monochrome seem to crystallize on their own and pulse across the image’s entire surface in a grid of countless squares.
In their optical play between proximity and distance, Ludwig’s pictorial inventions are not simply copies or imprints. Rather, he employs painting and its purest materials – light, shadow and formal constructions – layer by layer to consecutively superimpose color fields upon each other. The squares not only build a logical grid but also transform into their spatial opposite. Traces of what existed before begin to take on a life of their own. The previous investigations of structures and patterns that occasionally appeared in Ludwig’s works have mutated into something else. Penrose tiles and triangular structures from Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes find subtle echoes in the new works, this time centering, so to speak, around a question about the possibilities of painting.
Form and motif seem to variously approach the status of illusions. Formally, a suggestion of the painterly process can still be read despite the use of airbrush techniques – likewise for the pours, glazes and layering of earlier works. Metaphorically, the work seems to defy contemplative associations by oscillating between abstraction and representation. The motif is the structure itself. It emerges like the legendary Avalon out of painterly materials and a cloud of airbrush techniques and lives, like the hunting illustrations of earlier works, in the imagination of the viewer.
The motif of this new series understands itself as a possibility of going in-depth. Ludwig takes this literally. For him it means to grasp the concept of an image. Through their simulation of their own means and abilities, his paintings ultimately become their own motif. Structure, layering and formal techniques almost seem to produce themselves, self-sustaining like the enchanted Avalon of lore. The images are not merely a literal ‘Empire of Dirt.’ They are a proposal for our imaginations and their endless illusion, much like Roxy Music’s Avalon, is ‘a picture changing every moment.’
Philipp Fernandes do Brito
brud
27 May – 4 July 2015
When the samba takes you out of nowhere
And the background's fading out of focus
Yes the picture's changing every moment...
(Roxy Music, Avalon, 1982)
The point of departure is a surface, or rather the supposed impression it makes. A surface left behind by the back of a judo mat. A banal legacy – or at least so it seems. It depends on the perspective one takes on the things seen. For some, the debris accumulated underneath this surface is just dirt. For Sebastian Ludwig, the perception and form of this surface was the beginning of a new series of images. They begin with a process of visual abstraction. Here one eventually moves past the initial associations and, like Ludwig himself, begins to consider the sedimentation of time, which, from a distance, appears on the canvas as a monochromatic whole – a flat surface interwoven with light and shadow whose composition almost seems to be floating above its substrate. Visibly recognizable frameworks instantaneously appear through patches of similar forms and wonder off again just as quickly. As we walk a few steps closer, it becomes clear that a structure is beginning to form. Edges, corners and fine lines form visible grids on the surface of the images, in the very same way that they engraved the structure of the judo mat’s surface into the sedimentation of dust beneath it. The details of what had previously seemed a monochrome seem to crystallize on their own and pulse across the image’s entire surface in a grid of countless squares.
In their optical play between proximity and distance, Ludwig’s pictorial inventions are not simply copies or imprints. Rather, he employs painting and its purest materials – light, shadow and formal constructions – layer by layer to consecutively superimpose color fields upon each other. The squares not only build a logical grid but also transform into their spatial opposite. Traces of what existed before begin to take on a life of their own. The previous investigations of structures and patterns that occasionally appeared in Ludwig’s works have mutated into something else. Penrose tiles and triangular structures from Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes find subtle echoes in the new works, this time centering, so to speak, around a question about the possibilities of painting.
Form and motif seem to variously approach the status of illusions. Formally, a suggestion of the painterly process can still be read despite the use of airbrush techniques – likewise for the pours, glazes and layering of earlier works. Metaphorically, the work seems to defy contemplative associations by oscillating between abstraction and representation. The motif is the structure itself. It emerges like the legendary Avalon out of painterly materials and a cloud of airbrush techniques and lives, like the hunting illustrations of earlier works, in the imagination of the viewer.
The motif of this new series understands itself as a possibility of going in-depth. Ludwig takes this literally. For him it means to grasp the concept of an image. Through their simulation of their own means and abilities, his paintings ultimately become their own motif. Structure, layering and formal techniques almost seem to produce themselves, self-sustaining like the enchanted Avalon of lore. The images are not merely a literal ‘Empire of Dirt.’ They are a proposal for our imaginations and their endless illusion, much like Roxy Music’s Avalon, is ‘a picture changing every moment.’
Philipp Fernandes do Brito