Sylke von Gazasylkevongaza.com/pdf/Sylke-von-Gaza_Worksfolder-2017.pdf · Sylke von Gaza works...

Sylke von Gazaworks folder

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2Sylke von Gaza works folder 2014

Louis

Louis/ 180 x 180 cm / 2014 /


Earthly Delights

Earthly Delights/ 180 x 180 cm / 2014 /

GABRIEL

GABRIEL/ 180 x 180 cm / 2012 / venice /



Daedalus

Daedalus/ 180 x 180 cm / 2010 /


Bridget und Irene

Bridget/ 160 x 160 cm / 2010 /

Irene/ 160 x 160 cm / 2010 /


Roth painting

Roth painting/ 180 x 180 cm / 2010 /


small red veil painting lh 1 & small grey veil painting lh 1

small red veil painting lh 1/ 60 x 60 cm / 2009 /

small grey veil painting lh 1/ 60 x 60 cm / 2009 /


grey veil master painting lh

grey veil master painting lh/ 180 x 180 cm / 2009 /


transparent purple veil painting 1/ 130 x 130cm / 2008 /

purple veil painting


red veil painting

red veil master painting 6/ 180 x 180 cm / 2008 /


grey veil paintings

grey veil painting 19/ 100 x 100 cm / 2007 /

grey veil painting 20/ 100 x 100 cm / 2007 /


early works

bright white on grey 1/ 160 x 160 cm / 2005 /

bright white on olive green/ 150 x 130 cm / 2005 /


/ Photos: Vera Nowottny / Translation: Steven Lindberg /

In autumn 2008, Petra Giloy-Hirtz conducted the following interview with the artist after having visited her studio in Munich. Petra Giloy-Hirtz, PhD, lives and works as a curator and an author in Munich.

From the Grey to the ColourfulInterview with Sylke von Gaza

Sylke von Gaza works folder 2014 15

Giloy-Hirtz: During my most recent visit to your stu-dio, I saw your Purple Paintings and was surprised: by their presence and pathos, by their great emo-tional power. Previously, I was only familiar with grey in your work.von Gaza: Yes, I worked in grey for three years. That time was very important for me. Grey is a colour which brings me to the origin of things. It is neither black nor white, but rather a mixture of those two non-colours. So it is something with which one begins. It enabled me to establish the form of my painting without being distracted by colour as such.

Giloy-Hirtz: The thing which connects the two se-ries – the grey and the purple – and thus gives your work a conceptual quality is the form: the division of the picture plane into two parts by a horizontal line. What does this sort of reduction of painting to a few elements mean to you?von Gaza: You can do practically anything in painting. First, I had to liberate myself from the cliché in order to penetrate to the essence of painting. I try to leave everything out which has no further meaning for me. Such renunciation is painful. The viewer might get the impression I have a conceptual approach. In fact, I am an emo-tional painter.

Giloy-Hirtz: What do you say to the associations your paintings evoke in the viewer with regard to subject matter: horizon or fissure, veil, drapery? Do your works have a narrative level?von Gaza: No, I work non-representationally, ab- stractly. Nevertheless, without any direct intention

on my part, a deeper meaning is communicated to the viewer. It derives above all from the way I work. Working with just a few things, I try to de-pict everything which is important to me. In the process, a path is formulated involuntarily and becomes visible. The process of creation is im-portant to me, not just the finished painting.

Giloy-Hirtz: What does the horizon mean to you?von Gaza: Yes, the horizon, the line which sep-arates the two planes. It’s pretty much the only thing I have left. I try to put everything into this line. I begin the painting process there. It leads me through the painting. I begin with concentra-tion and then let it go immediately when the brush filled with paint glides over the canvas. The hori-zon is always sensed. I concentrate and find the middle. Once I sketched the horizon as an exper-iment. That painting had no charm for me. But it was an interesting experiment.

Giloy-Hirtz: How do you achieve this diaphanous, transparent quality in your painting? It is clear that monochrome layers of paint are hidden beneath the lines of the brush. Your brushwork in general ...von Gaza: I work with layers of paint. Usually, I start with a Venetian ground. A kind of homage to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian paint-ing. Often, I then place a brilliantly colourful in-termediate layer over that and then paint over it again, with brown, for example. Like everything which is suppressed – in the psychological sense as well – its energy can nonetheless be felt. The intermediate layers of colour are often comple-

mentary to the final layer. For example, a brilliant green as a second layer, covered with a brown layer, will interact energetically with the red of the final layer, with the surface.

Giloy-Hirtz: There are so many differences to dis-cover in the apparent uniformity! But what do you think of while doing it? Of landscape?von Gaza: I have a great love of nature. The grey sky meeting a grey body of water – then I can-not look away. But that’s more because I want to paint an emotion and not the landscape it-self. The feeling of oneness I have when I’m in it.

Giloy-Hirtz: So your paintings expression your own personal state?von Gaza: I try to express something larger which has meaning for everyone. And yet it is my energy. Let me tell a little story:

I had tenosynovitis during the preparation for an exhibition, so I asked my assistant to apply the ground for the painting. When he got to the col-oured intermediate layer, I noticed it was not the expression I had imagined. It became clear to me that I could not even define why, but the plane feels different to me. I painted over the paintings in question – they simply did not work.

Over time, I realised that a certain expression can only be produced by the painter’s energy. It is unique. The phenomenon already starts when mixing the paint; it goes beyond the painting of individual layers of colour to the surface, which


traditionally, too, was, of course, usually painted by the master himself.

Giloy-Hirtz: The surfaces are produced in great con-centration, in a meditative process of painting.von Gaza: Yes, really it’s the idea of concentra-tion, repetition and release. Once you have done the same thing over again often enough, a fa-miliarity with your own paintings and with the things themselves results. Applying the paint to the canvas, directly, with detached concentration, has always been a thrill for me. It’s what I like to do most. Delicate, subtle differences which result in the process of painting fascinate me. The pro-cess of painting excites me. So the motif is never boring for me. I express through the brushstroke; I try to put everything I can into it.

Giloy-Hirtz: Which of the old masters of the histo-ry of Western art have inspired you?von Gaza: I am most fascinated by the power of Cimabue’s works. I have been touched by the light in Bellini’s painting.

Giloy-Hirtz: To whom do you feel an intellectual kin-ship when you think of abstract painting?von Gaza: My encounters with particular works by abstract painters who defined a time are im-portant to me. Again and again, I think about my encounter with works by Rothko in a room in Tate Modern in London.

Giloy-Hirtz: Do you always paint one work at a time?von Gaza: No, often I conceive my paintings in pairs or in groups. Often I imagine a space in

which the finished paintings will hang, as if en-gaged in dialogue. For example, when I painted the Red Veil Master Paintings, I imagined a space in which six large red veils were hanging. They were supposed to communicate – in terms of their surfaces in relation to one another and in terms of the structure of their colour, the various layers of colour – and yet at the same time con-vey an impression of unity. There is a synergetic effect. Then they are no longer just six paint-ings but rather an impression of what I want-ed to express.

Giloy-Hirtz: It is striking that you finish the rather aloof surfaces of the grey series, with their haptic effect of the canvas, with a varnish which reflects the light and almost mirrors the space and the view-er.von Gaza: At first, it was a reduction to the col-our grey which made the form or style even more visible. If you leave something out – in this case, colour – other things become visible. In my later works in colour, I am interested more in the en-ergetic aspect, how various layers of colour in-teract.

Giloy-Hirtz: How did you arrive at this idea of treat-ing colour in this way?von Gaza: It was more a feeling than a thought. Several years ago, I travelled to Assisi, to the Basilica di San Francesco. There, I encountered the painting of Cimabue for the first time. His en-ergy penetrates the subject. It is about so much more than reproduction. His painting overcomes

reproduction and becomes pure expression: en-ergy. I try to do that with colour.

Giloy-Hirtz: You work in series. How did that come about?von Gaza: Always seeming to do the same thing and yet a different expression results. It is the subtle differences. When produced in series, the paintings come into contact with one another. Usually I paint two or more at a time. In series, it becomes possible to perceive the differences in brushstroke or in the different layers of paint. Another dimension results that has an effect even between paintings of different colours – for ex-ample, between the grey and the red works. They form a context which supplements the individ-ual works. It is also nice to see the brushwork in the rather aloof-looking grey paintings ver-sus the deep colour of the red paintings. Also, I have a hard time separating myself. Having sim-ilar paintings consoles me after selling a work. I’m only half joking.

Giloy-Hirtz: The square is your format now, ex-clusively.von Gaza: Yes, the square is an ideal form. When I paint a square format, I first have to destroy something, namely an ideal dimension. That hap-pens with the first brushstroke. With a rectangle, it is different. Then there is a tendency to pro-duce an ideal proportion, with the aid of the gold-en section, for example. When I paint a square, I destroy the harmony in order to recreate it in the process of painting. That is a different approach.


I used to work with rectangular formats as well. I find the square more appealing in this context.

Giloy-Hirtz: You studied with Sean Scully. Why did you choose him as a teacher?von Gaza: I first encountered Scully’s work at a show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. The first painting I saw was Durango. I felt like I’d been hit with a right hook. At the same time, I can re-call thinking that anyone that intense is also sen-sitive. Somehow I recognised part of myself in those works.

Giloy-Hirtz: What interested you about the way Scully teaches?von Gaza: I wanted a teacher whose intensity I could rely on. I need resistance. Scully gave something more like psychological lessons than formal instructions. It was about overcoming one’s own psychological limitations. According to the maxim: Know yourself, then you will know what kind of painter you are. He was not always exactly gentle about that.

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