Page 42 - Studio International - February 1972

'Primary Structures' as an end in itself. sculptures, and white panels which he arranges so sytematically in the dead centre that all the
What the constructivists had wanted for into triptychs and leans apparently casually corners curl up at an equal distance; or he breaks
decades, the elevation of art to the status of an against the wall; but in collective shows what a wooden rod into pieces of equal length, so that
objective visual science, became reality in the have always attracted the most attention is his a long wooden vertical turns into a neat cubic
work of Peter Roehr, through the artist's projections. A number of projected stack. I wrote about his films, in which he
renunication of invention and through art's transparencies, programmed in rhythmically draws or hammers out diagonals or circles
renunication of all its expressive resources. If different ways, cast almost invisible bands or around himself, in my piece about 'Prospect'
there can be detected among the younger artists squares of light on the wall; 'empty pictures'. (December 1971). In his most recent exhibition
in Germany today a decided trend towards To start with one thinks something has gone (at Konrad Fischer's gallery, in November
minimalization, this is less a product of wrong and waits for normal pictures to come on; 1971), he showed five successive states of an
American Minimal Art than of the work of gradually comes the realization that this tranquil iron strip : (1) the strip, 5 metres long, as it is
Roehr. And all could apply to themselves the alternation of illuminated areas constitutes both sold; (2) the strip bent into an incomplete
note in his diary: 'Whether what I am doing is the exhibit itself and the artist's process of circle; (3) the strip with its ends welded together
art, I don't know; but on the other hand I don't projection. This is of course not entirely to form a complete circle; (4) the welded strip,
know what else it could be.' independent of the ideas of Jan Dibbets. still bent into a circle, but opened up again; (5)
The process of minimalizing the gesture of Knoebel's characteristic effect, the tension the strip, still welded, straightened out to form
the artist, using a rational line to open up whole between rational limitation and irrational a vertical again. The idea is set down in a
expanses of irrational after-impressions and to liberation, becomes particularly evident when drawing, but nevertheless this is a case where
attain the tension between visual and non-visual the geometrical light figures are projected out Process Art once more becomes a demonstration
awareness that I mentioned at the outset, can into a nocturnal landscape. carried out with and in a material.
take on a number of very different forms. Roehr Another artist who reveals a certain affinity Palermo, Rückriem and Knoebel were
is an example of the theoretical, Palermo an with Dibbets is Ulrich Rückriem, who also represented in this year's Biennale des Jeunes in
example of the sensual, 'painterly' form of carries geometrical quantities over into raw Paris; and one of the prizes at the show went to
Minimalism. Palermo, who took his pseudonym reality. However, this trained stonemason is no Klaus Rinke. He is without a doubt the most
from the Mafia gangster Blinky Palermo, was conceptualist, but a man of action; he 'really elemental artist working on the Rhineland art
born in Leipzig in 1943. He was a student in works', as they say of him in Dusseldorf. Born in scene at the moment; and his element is water.
Beuys's master class, and has an impressive 1938, he worked as a mason on Cologne Born in 1939 in the Ruhr, he became an
number of exhibitions to his credit since 1966. Cathedral before emerging as an artist in a apprentice salesman in a big store, then an art
He started off with large pictures sewn together whole series of one-man exhibitions during student; and in 1966 he gave up painting on the
out of found lengths of fabric, which in their 1971. He might be called an obsessive classicist; grounds that 'painting is blowing up Nature'.
colour contrasts show the unmistakable his preoccupation is always with measure and What he wants to do is to use Nature to blow up
influence of Ellsworth Kelly. He then cut up the proportion. He takes lumps of rock or massive the museums. He became known in 1968—69
bands of cloth into separate textile objects, stones and makes precise and accurate incisions through three very characteristic ideas,
composed as wall pictures, which he transferred in them, horizontal or vertical clefts; the stone combining physical strength with intellectual
to the wall direct in paint. Palermo is that rare is sliced open at regular intervals, without ever simplicity. At the Kunsthalle in Berne he made
phenomenon, a contemporary mural painter. cracking or splitting. Or he takes out a it impossible to enter the building without
His primary concern is with a selected colour geometrical piece and leaves the rest in its crossing water —or, to be precise, walking over a
tone, an orange, with which he fills the whole natural state; or he hammers a heavy iron plate huge, tight water-bag which made it very hard
wall, while he uses the same colour on the wall
opposite only as a frame for a void. Out of this 8
empty expanse, Palermo's artistic sensibility,
almost in spite of itself, conjures tiny chromatic
markings which take their place in the context
of the pre-existing architecture. A little blue
triangle over a huge door; a very narrow band
of colour running round a Baroque ceiling; a
rising monochrome track, mimicking a staircase
mural, on an endless expanse of wall : that's all.
People on their first visit have to be told that
the room is not completely bare. These are not
so much spatial markings or spatial modifications
as reflections of the unique realization that
space is the empty mould of painting, and that
one is standing in the midst of a picture that is
not 'really' there at all. Painting becomes the
framing of the spectator in his own space; and
this sparse, far-flung frame radiates warmth.
Palermo's drawings and prints do not have the
same methodological strictness, but allow more
free play to the sensitivity of line.
The reduction of the means (the visible
positive form); the expansion of the effect (the
invisible negative form); on another plane
W. Knoebel is trying to do something analogous.
Born in 1940, also a former pupil of Beuys, he
had his first one-man show in 1969 (at Art &
Project in Amsterdam). He does make
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