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The site-specific installation by Ralf Gemein for John_Doe is generated from the Playmobil figure which he is iconically using in his paintings. The Playmobils are signs more than real entities, therefore working with them is like working on the premises of abstract art. Their reductiveness in signification implies their function as free forms. As such they serve as means of sustaining the reality of a painting as an object and it is the painting and not its narration that gets painterly priority over the act of representation. The focus on the act of painting itself is central to Ralf Gemeins artistic approach. Before he starts painting his images are processed in the computer. The Playmobils are photographed and then brought into new spatial positions and constellations. Only after this they are applied through very thin layers of paint to the canvas. Ralf Gemein uses on purpose the aesthetics of the computer. It is exactly the qualities of flatness, of mathematical proportions, of lack of texture that he is investigating by relating them to painting. Being figures of no depth, of no history and of no qualities Playmobils are perfect prototypes of pure forms and therefore ideal objects of contemplating the act of painting. For John_Doe Ralf Gemein proceeds in this strategy and develops the notion of a world of slices whose parts function as metonymic particles implicating the whole. |
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