Hermann Josef Painitz – Aesthetics as Reflection

Letters become symbols, geometric series become matrixes, series and rhythms become encoded scripts: since the 1960ies, Hermann Josef Painitz deals with language and scripture, with connections between signs, letters, symbols, colours, and meanings. The exhibition "Hermann J. Painitz, Self-Evident" as the fruit of a lifelong artistic research is on display at ZEITKUNST Niederösterreich in the Lower Austria Contemporary Gallery St. Pölten until August 24th, 2014.

In his “logical art”, statistical data are converted visually and geometrically, visual sign systems are codified and presented to the viewer for decoding.

Without a doubt, Painitz is a restless artist who never stopped introducing modifications, extensions and challenges to his work, producing interferences and techniques in a lucid way, radicalizing the incomplete dimension of his analysis.

Here every image can be reduced to a formula, a sign, proportions, vectors etc., there is an existing iconography of logics and physics, material traces, a drawing, a site map of the mind, genetically contained in its signs. The imagination unfolds with the sensorial experiences and then introduces a new element into the images: time. Precise coordinates of time and space open the spectrum of expression towards a metaphysical dimension.
In the spirit of Umberto Eco’s concept of open text (opera aperta), Hermann Painitz operates with a polysemous artistic alphabet for the creation of his plastical and conceptual artefacts. The conceptual art of Painitz eliminates the object of art in its traditional modality. The focal point shifts from the object to the concept, as well as to the perceptive, imaginative and creative capability of the recipient.

This is the moment of encounter between the syntactical- formal tendency on the one hand, and the semantic-pragmatic -with less emphasis on syntax- on the other. Both alternatives reach beyond the institutionalised limits of tradition, while a third approach questions the existential status of the artwork as an object.

However, even in the most extreme cases a complete dematerialisation will not be possible as even words in writing are “objects” in their orality, and as such essentially not cultural ones but objects of perception, with a meaning ascribed to them.

Thus, within the perceptive dimension of the signs we discover that the proportions, formulas and problems introduced by logics and mathematics entail a new aesthetic attitude as well.
With his pictograms and their reflections, effects, unreal perspectives, serial repetitions, harmonies and shining colours, Painitz manages to convey a feeling of levitation, of a hovering equilibrium, but always with an awareness of the potential mental fall from this state of levitation.

Here the visual experience is introduced as a kind of relentless and irreducible cognition, in an art that possesses a particular capability of resistance against domestication. In an artistic universe dominated by metaphors, messages and other discursive constructs, the insurgent aesthetic of Hermann Painitz captivates the viewer, blocking the connecting bridge between the diverging symbolic fields.

In the course of this investigation the works became more and more simple in composition but more complicated in their conception. The conceptual system chosen by the artist remains as a challenge for decipherment to the viewer. Painitz’ work challenges mental habits as well as gravity and the viewers’ perception. An artist-portrait by CastYourArt. | castyourart.com (written by Cem Angeli)

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Interviewee: Hermann Josef Painitz
Artworks by: Hermann Josef Painitz

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German, English
Subtitles: German, English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Helmut Feier, Roman Pachernegg
Production country: Austria, St. Pölten