Exhibition
“FLATLANDS (TO BE CONTINUED)” is a collaboration with Klangspuren, for which the artist from Schwaz has created this year’s subjects. Known above all for his work in the field of electronic art and robotics, Rens Veltman is also showing his drawing work in the gallery for the first time on this scale. He is referring to drawings that he himself creates by hand on A4 paper with thin ink-gel pens in the classic sense, as opposed to those that are executed by specially programmed robots, often directly on the wall. Recently, several series have been created, daily concentration exercises that make the connection between thinking and drawing immediately comprehensible. “He thinks by drawing,” writes Eva Maria Stadler about the artist. “In the special connection between hand and head, which represents a decisive force not only for art, in the literal sense, Veltman looks for and finds an uncompromising form of immediacy.” In addition, he also finds in drawing an opportunity to watch himself think and to reflect on this form of self-observation in relation to technical thinking devices. In his hand drawings, the direct transfer of an inner impulse into an external form manifests itself more as an energetic trace than as an expressive gesture. From the very beginning, Veltman's way of working has been characterized by this oscillation between conceptual discipline and an intuitive approach. The small format bundles the performative events that take place between the inherent laws of the resulting drawing and the self-imposed task. In the abstract all-over of the exceptionally fine lines, one wants to make representations out of condensations, overlaps and changes of direction. But you can't be sure of this. Only the titles provide clues to the definition of the image, shifting the reception of the accumulated line material to a mental level. Approximately parallel horizontal lines are now seen as the water surface. If you rotate the motif 90 degrees, it becomes a waterfall. Although these associations tend to become fixed, they can easily be overwritten by renewed verbalization. Accordingly, the circular arrangements are alternately referred to as eyes, cow dung, asshole or hurricane, as the continuous image titles on small LED signs suggest. “FLATLANDS”, in the plural, refers to the 1884 novella “Flatland: A romance of many dimensions” by the English writer Edwin A. Abbott, a satirical dig at the rigid Victorian social order. Different geometric figures live in different dimensions, such as: B. in area land, line land and in spherical land. No matter how strictly the inhabitants of different dimensions adhere to hierarchical boundaries in their own country, they are unable to get involved in foreign, incomprehensible ideas that, on the contrary, they vehemently exclude and legally pursue. The narrator, a Mr. A. Square, ends up in prison. Against this background, Veltman's postscript “TO BE CONTINUED” refers not only to future exhibitions, but also to the conscious open-endedness of his works, which advocate multidimensional thinking.
Text: Anette Freudenberger
Photo © Rens Veltman
