Painting as place of hiding

Hans Jandl´s pictures have clearly changed. First of all, his new works seem to be a radical counterpoint to the narrative and figurative pictures of the time before. His new paintings, determined by colour, texture and by a simple pictorial arrangement, are an expression of a reduction and a simplification which he contrasts with the endlesspossibilities of figurativeness. Concretisation instead of narration.

For about two years Hans Jandl has been dealing with abstract painting. Similar to the American colour-field painting of the post-war period he sets out - skillfully handling his medium - to search for the true substance of painting. He transfers the stringent approaches of the Americans to a European painting tradition in which his formal vocabulary originates. Every area has a certain form and structure being open to a great variety of interpretations, though without necessitating them. It can be a way leading in a certain direction, but it can, in its colourfulness and structure, also refer to spheric infiniteness. A certain mysteriousness is calculation and keeps the spectator deliberately in the ambiguity of concrete and abstract. He also visualizes a boundary walk between the energetical effect of colour and the high expressional value of a simple pictorial order. The shining colourfulness of the pictures creates spheric effect and mystical aura. His preference for contrasts also manifests itself in his setting smooth colour stripes against others having a colour and plastic structure.The scraped stroke is likewise used as pictorial structure. The effect of the colours by their harmony and their difference expresses itself in these pictures just as the possibility of their various applications reaching from the uniform, smooth colour surface to a coloured depth space having been paintet over several times. With reference to Arnulf Rainer he creates tension by hiding: he repeatedly over-paints particular colour fields and by blank spots enables us to look into the colour coatings lying underneath. He contrasts the resulting meaningful colour spaces with simple colour areas - without giving any comment.

Being conscious of the impossibility of demystyfying painting by painting he confronts it with different materials, preferentially lead. He thematises the non-painted painting in a lead picture, by directly mounting the lead on a wedge frame, just as the canvas on the conventional painting. He makes clear that painting - in trying to find its sense and justification - transcends its limits, because it is, according to M. Fried, forced to "risk its identity by binding itself to things which are not painting".¹

Hans Jandl however is not only concerned by the painting effect of lead due to its constant changing, for him it is above all a synonym for ambivalence and vagueness. Lead is one of the heaviest and at the same time softest metals , it is malleable and compact, just as dangerously poisonous as protective. It has a direct reference to painting by its own gray colour, as white lead and as component for various colours in form of lead oxyde.

Jandl´s preference for this material is an expression of his preference for contrasts, ruptres, differences. in their calculated vagueness his pictures can be seen as an encouragement to become conscious of the variety and uncertainty of all being. They are just as much spontaneous as devised, open and resurved, concrete and abstract. At any rate they are good painting and their many-layered substance is revealed to any interested and attendive critic.

Gertrude Celedin