Paintings which never leave Königsberg
Bernard Frize’s « Euler Tour, Pavitram, Sona,... etc. » canvasses
By Friedrich Meschede
Bernard Frize’s artistic work is made up of groups of paintings. He paints in series to achieve different variations. Bernard Frize’s works are both for the viewer and for himself based on an elementary method – that of comparative studies. Due to the inauguration of the new Emmanuel Perrotin exhibitionspace in Miami, USA, Bernard Frize presents a new series of paintings with the title “Euler Tour, Pavitram, Sona,...etc.” This new series has not yet been fully executed, 12 paintings have been completed, 10 of which are for the first time being publicly exhibited in the Miami gallery. Other versions exist as virtual concepts materialised by sketches, stored on computer.
The various canvasses have similar features as far as shape and size are concerned: all the canvasses are square-shaped and have equal dimensions of 185 x 185 cm. All the paintings also feature a pattern made up of one continuing grey brush stroke which forms a grid-type structure that covers the canvasses. A first quick look at the paintings gives the impression that the structure of ornament is the concept of all the paintings, which is carried on from one canvas to the next. Due to the alignment of the consecutive paintings, it thus produces both a continuous “all-over” in each single work and a symmetrical “all- over” effect due to the layout of the canvasses in the exhibition-space.
One has to study the paintings more closely to gradually detect the subtleties of each individual work. Each painting is made up of an individual grid-type structure achieved by mathematical precision. The canvas is prepared with lines as a raster spaced out at regular intervals, whereby these lines change direction at the points of intersection inside the grid. In order to avoid ending up with a closed unit and to enable variations, “openings” – in the sense of omissions – are incorporated into this grid-type composition. This makes it possible to later trace a junction brush stroke from one point to another, thus covering the entire space, which is gradually filled up with a continuous line of colour. The result, which appears like an ornament, is computer-sketched beforehand and is based on this game of opening and closing.
In a text about these paintings, Bernard Frize himself came up with a metaphor to describe this technique which at the same time is his artistic concept that consists in always tracing a continuous, endless line in order to create an interlacing arrangement which seems to compose each painting based on it´s own logic. Frize refers to the mathematician Leonard Euler (1707-1783) from Basel in Switzerland, whose thinking pattern based on the “bridges of Königsberg”. They represent the basis of this experiment as well as a reference for a work of art: “what route must be taken to cross the city of seven bridges and return to the point of departure without using the same bridge twice?” (E.P. Gallery, magazine 01, Dec. 05 - March 06, p. 04). Euler was a mathematician in Saint Petersburg, Berlin and then once again in Saint Petersburg. He is so important to Frize from a philosophical point of view that his name has been used in the title of Frize’s work; Euler thus appears as the patron of this series of paintings.
At this stage, Bernard Frize’s concept becomes more clear: his artistic goal is to create his own mathematical systematics based on a coherent playful concept to achieve a painting which combines both: chance and systematics. This game of structure and accident makes up the basis of the pictorial technique, which always consists in starting a line from a specific point, linking it logically to the next spot, and thus covering the canvas from one “bridge” to another in order to achieve an interlaced line traced with one continuous brush stroke. A contrast appears between the freedom of artistic hand-tracing and the discipline of the given route linked with the relevant achievement thereof. All emotions are thus put aside, making way for concentration. Besides the mathematical reference to Euler, Frize’s title also refers to the links with similarly structured decorative works in various ancient cultures and decorative art ranging from India (Pavitram/Sona) to the Celts (etc.). In comparison and in difference to these cultural models, which immediately occur as an association, Frize clearly carries on a method of painting in the conciousness of enlightment, an intention that could represent more than a universal language of decorative concepts in trible art. This aim of decorative art in various ethnical cultures consists in standardising patterns in order to pass them over on combined with an ideological refusal of an image as such. However, Bernard Frize’s goal is to create an image, as a stimulation of thinking, which is the opposite of what he can find in cultural testimonies from the past. This experience becomes a trap which at the same time opens a new dimension of space for the audience.
One has to overcome the superficial decorative aspect of the canvasses to discover inside each work the intellectual challenge which takes shape with each tracing of the line. Each canvas is an invitation to start searching for the beginning and the end of the brush-stroke, as well as the composition rule, which is at the same time the aim to overcome this traditional idea of painting. The ornament becomes a painting made up by the logic movement of a line. Frize’s works remains in an idea of process of painting in order to create thinking, which always is a process as such. In many of Bernard Frize’s works, there are these contradictions which one only notices after taking a closer look at the paintings and from then on, one is riveted and encouraged to analyse the canvas more closely: the eyes run across the structure, get confused, start analysing the pattern again, get lost in the canvas and all recollection is deleted as soon as they are turned away. Afterwards, the audience only has a dim recollection of it. The various details which define each individual work only remain obvious when in front of the painting. These canvasses suspend memory and enforce their presence.
This is also reflected in the shade of grey chosen by Frize – a hue he has used for the first time in his work, as far as I remember. Many paintings made before this Euler series feature vivid and nearly expressive colours. In other paintings where Frize has used lines with unclear beginnings and endings, this break between the starting point of the line and its target is clearly visible by the gradual decrease of the vividness of the colour to it´s the consistency. Everything is comprehensive. Again Frize plays with mixtures of fortuitously obtained colours by accident in order to obtain unpredictable streaks.
But all these elements featured in his works before are suspended in this series of the grey Euler- paintings. The grey colour corresponds and reflects the tautology of the consistent interlacing of the lines. This aspect of a specific shade confirms the principle of a consistent unit. All different colours are cancelled in the colour of grey. One can even consider this as another reference to Leonard Euler biography, who went blind at the end of his life and could therefore only sense things. However, this “Frize grey” is a proper colour, given that it results from a thorough process: it is not just a mere proportional mixture of black and white – it also contains other colours, which appear and are expressed through this warm shade of grey. The series of “Euler Tour, Pavitram, Sona, ...etc.” paintings by Bernard Frize suspend and enclose, transfer and make this irreversible, which is the principle of entropy.
They can also be understood as a reference to another famous character – Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher who was a contemporary of Euler’s. Kant had close links with Königsberg – the city he never left. But nobody knows whether he ever crossed the “seven Euler-bridges” without using the same bridge twice. He lived in a closed area from where his ideas marked the beginning of a new direction in human thought, which mainly is acquiring the faculty of judgment. Criticism and power of judgment are not only an integral part of the titles of Kant’s writing – they represent the goal of knowledge. The original meaning of criticism at that period of time was understood as the faculty of judgment. This brings us back to the beginning of this text. Frize uses a technique based on a comparative study of paintings which look alike to refer to a subtlety as regards “Gestalt” (form), in order to trigger thought. It seems that Bernard Frize has created this Euler series as a tribute to thought, in order to support pure reflective i.e.“useless”(Kant) thoughts; Frize made paintings that are said to have never left “Königsberg”.
Paintings which never leave Königsberg
Bernard Frize’s « Euler Tour, Pavitram, Sona,... etc. » canvasses
By Friedrich Meschede
Bernard Frize’s artistic work is made up of groups of paintings. He paints in series to achieve different variations. Bernard Frize’s works are both for the viewer and for himself based on an elementary method – that of comparative studies. Due to the inauguration of the new Emmanuel Perrotin exhibition space in Miami, USA, Bernard Frize presents a new series of paintings with the title “Euler Tour, Pavitram, Sona,...etc.” This new series has not yet been fully executed, 12 paintings have been completed, 10 of which are for the first time being publicly exhibited in the Miami gallery. Other versions exist as virtual concepts materialised by sketches, stored on computer.
The various canvasses have similar features as far as shape and size are concerned: all the canvasses are square-shaped and have equal dimensions of 185 x 185 cm. All the paintings also feature a pattern made up of one continuing grey brush stroke, which forms a grid-type structure that covers the canvasses. A first quick look at the paintings gives the impression that the structure of ornament is the concept of all the paintings, which is carried on from one canvas to the next. Due to the alignment of the consecutive paintings, it thus produces both a continuous “all-over” in each single work and a symmetrical “all- over” effect due to the layout of the canvasses in the exhibition-space.
One has to study the paintings more closely to gradually detect the subtleties of each individual work. Each painting is made up of an individual grid-type structure achieved by mathematical precision. The canvas is prepared with lines as a raster spaced out at regular intervals, whereby these lines change direction at the points of intersection inside the grid. In order to avoid ending up with a closed unit and to enable variations, “openings” – in the sense of omissions – are incorporated into this grid-type composition. This makes it possible to later trace a junction brush stroke from one point to another, thus covering the entire space, which is gradually filled up with a continuous line of colour. The result, which appears like an ornament, is computer-sketched beforehand and is based on this game of opening and closing.
In a text about these paintings, Bernard Frize himself came up with a metaphor to describe this technique which at the same time is his artistic concept that consists in always tracing a continuous, endless line in order to create an interlacing arrangement which seems to compose each painting based on it´s own logic. Frize refers to the mathematician Leonard Euler (1707-1783) from Basel in Switzerland, whose thinking pattern based on the “bridges of Königsberg”. They represent the basis of this experiment as well as a reference for a work of art: “what route must be taken to cross the city of seven bridges and return to the point of departure without using the same bridge twice?” (E.P. Gallery, magazine 01, Dec. 05 - March 06, p. 04). Euler was a mathematician in Saint Petersburg, Berlin and then once again in Saint Petersburg. He is so important to Frize from a philosophical point of view (in) that his name has been used in the title of Frize’s work; Euler thus appears as the patron of this series of paintings.
At this stage, Bernard Frize’s concept becomes more clear: his artistic goal is to create his own mathematical systematics based on a coherent playful concept to achieve a painting which combines both: chance and systematics. This game of structure and accident makes up the basis of the (his) pictorial technique, which always consists in starting a line from a specific point, linking it logically to the next spot, and thus covering the canvas from one “bridge” to another in order to achieve an interlaced line traced with one continuous brush stroke. A contrast appears between the freedom of artistic hand-tracing and the discipline of the given route linked with the relevant achievement thereof. All emotions are thus put aside, making way for concentration. Besides the mathematical reference to Euler, Frize’s title also refers to the links with similarly structured decorative works in various ancient cultures and decorative art ranging from India (Pavitram/Sona) to the Celts (etc.). In comparison and in difference to these cultural models, which immediately occur as an association, Frize clearly carries on a method of painting in the consciousness of enlightenment, an intention that could represent more than a universal language of decorative concepts in tribal art. This aim of decorative art in various ethnical cultures consists in standardising patterns in order to pass them over on combined with an ideological refusal of an image as such. However, Bernard Frize’s goal is to create an image, as a stimulation of thinking, which is the opposite of what he can find in cultural testimonies from the past. This experience becomes a trap which at the same time opens a new dimension of space for the audience.
One has to overcome the superficial decorative aspect of the canvasses to discover inside each work the intellectual challenge which takes shape with each tracing of the line. Each canvas is an invitation to start searching for the beginning and the end of the brush-stroke, as well as the composition rule, which is at the same time the aim to overcome this traditional idea of painting. The ornament becomes a painting made up by the logic movement of a line. Frize’s works remains in an idea of process of painting in order to create thinking, which always is a process as such. In many of Bernard Frize’s works, there are these contradictions which one only notices after taking a closer look at the paintings and from then on, one is riveted and encouraged to analyse the canvas more closely: the eyes run across the structure, get confused, start analysing the pattern again, get lost in the canvas and all recollection is deleted as soon as they are turned away. Afterwards, the audience only has a dim recollection of it. The various details which define each individual work only remain obvious when in front of the painting. These canvasses suspend memory and enforce their presence.
This is also reflected in the shade of grey chosen by Frize – a hue he has used for the first time in his work, as far as I remember. Many paintings made before this Euler series feature vivid and nearly expressive colours. In other paintings where Frize has used lines with unclear beginnings and endings, this break between the starting point of the line and its target is clearly visible by the gradual decrease of the vividness of the colour to its the consistency. Everything is comprehensive. Again Frize plays with mixtures of fortuitously obtained colours by accident in order to obtain unpredictable streaks.
But all these elements featured in his works before (previous works) are suspended in this series of the grey Euler- paintings. The grey colour corresponds and reflects the tautology of the consistent interlacing of the lines. This aspect of a specific shade confirms the principle of a consistent unit. All different colours are cancelled in the colour of grey. One can even consider this as another reference to Leonard Euler biography, who went blind at the end of his life and could therefore only sense things. However, this “Frize grey” is a proper colour, given that it results from a thorough process: it is not just a mere proportional mixture of black and white – it also contains other colours, which appear and are expressed through this warm shade of grey. The series of “Euler Tour, Pavitram, Sona, ...etc.” paintings by Bernard Frize suspend and enclose, transfer and make this irreversible, which is the principle of entropy.
They can also be understood as a reference to another famous character – Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher who was a contemporary of Euler’s. Kant had close links with Königsberg – the city he never left. But nobody knows whether he ever crossed the “seven Euler-bridges” without using the same bridge twice. He lived in a closed area from where his ideas marked the beginning of a new direction in human thought, which mainly is acquiring the faculty of judgment. Criticism and power of judgment are not only an integral part of the titles of Kant’s writing – they represent the goal of knowledge. The original meaning of criticism at that period of time was understood as the faculty of judgment. This brings us back to the beginning of this text. Frize uses a technique based on a comparative study of paintings which look alike to refer to a subtlety as regards “Gestalt” (form), in order to trigger thought. It seems that Bernard Frize has created this Euler series as a tribute to thought, in order to support pure reflective i.e.“useless”(Kant) thoughts; Frize made paintings that are said to have never left “Königsberg”.