Once Internalized, Space Can Be Portrayed

By: Claus Friede
Curator, 2012
Kunstforum Markert, Hamburg, Germany


Space may be measured in geographical units but it can also have an emotional dimension. The Swiss travel writer and photographer Ella Maillard wrote during her Afghanistan trip of 1939: "Only those who grasp the expanse of space and allow it to mature can truly claim it." This sentence can be applied almost perfectly to the paintings of Armin Mühsam, even if his work were to address nothing else besides landscape and space. The artist, however, works with much more complex themes. They do not reveal themselves at first glance, and the concept of space eventually achieves a multifaceted and meaningful component. Depth of space turns into deep meaning.

Mühsam paints landscapes that are never unspoiled nature-scapes, but always sophisticated cultivated landscapes. Every one of his paintings portrays human creations of various kinds: architectural, symbolic, cultural, and civilizing. He visualizes these creations through the use of various construction elements, planted vegetation and isolated fragments. The latter function as relics of sorts, sometimes in the shape of railroad and vehicle tracks, at other times in the shape of a historicized industry stuck in an analog mindset, or yet again in the shape of building-block elements abandoned before completion. The sterile cleanliness of his painting style – not a speck of dust has strayed onto his canvas – and the sharp contours, along with the directed light and the resulting shadows suggest a perception that interprets everything as a model of that which is seen. This is also what the ever-recurring painted sawhorses and model boxes are meant to signify. The ghostly vacant and purged locations are reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche's descriptions of a nocturnal Turin.

We realize quite quickly: What is being depicted does not represent itself (let alone stand in for just itself), nor does it explain itself sufficiently. Instead, there are symbolic references, dreamlike visions and narrative comments for something that lies outside the image area. The artist is not referring to the topic, but rather to the type; a landscape with buildings is a universally valid concept, with a typical structure and typical features. Mediterranean trees, here and there traces of a shrub, a meadow or a lawn, but never a flower or anything that is in full bloom.

The buildings and structures are clear and simple, with the occasional hint of a quote thrown in: étienne-Louis Boullée's Cenotaphs suggest themselves, while Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico and Leo von Klenze serve as influences. The skies and cloud formations reference names such as Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich. All these names are secondary, however, and merely demonstrate that Armin Mühsam knows and has studied his predecessors well.

In addition, there are strange, dark entranceways, concrete-gray underpasses and tunnels, along with bunker- and container-like forms.

Drafting and surveying tools such as straightedges and geographical instruments as well as tripods make it clear to the viewer that planning and construction were necessary to accomplish the motif on the one hand and the painting on the other. This is to say, the artist is referring to the symbolic construction which could once have occurred as part of the narrative depicted in the painting itself, while at the same time referring to his own, complex construction of having composed and painted the image. Communication is symbolized by roads and railroad tracks, transmission towers and satellite dishes.

In fact, Mühsam seems to work like a classic sculptor, and to have removed everything superfluous from the image. The end-product contains only the indispensable – that which has been distilled from a process of observation and subsequent purification. This would also explain the almost viscerally felt emptiness of the image space.

Man is never directly visible, as if the artist wants to tell us: The world now functions without his kind. However, the invisibility of humanity does not automatically imply its absence.

In Mühsam's paintings there are two preferred viewpoints – from above, using an elevated, somewhat remote vantage point, and from eye level.

At the same time, he also offers us his preferred options on how to approach his works: one would be via art and art history, the other via politics and social commentary. In texts about Mühsam the closeness to de Chirico is often written about, mentioning the "Pittura Metafisica," which created a kind of hyperrealism, and to which Mühsam is connected in a distinct, tentative yet noticeable way.

I would like to address another approach, one that prefers to devote itself to the idea of a translation and steers the process of understanding and forming toward the desired result in a free and creative manner. My emphasis here will be on cultural analysis, prompted by clues that are visually apparent as well as implied, without ever having spoken with the artist.

With all of Armin Mühsam's paintings the viewer has the feeling that there is something that cannot be seen. It is as if there was a secret, something mystical, invisible and hidden as we stand guessing in front of the pictures. The questions that arise are: Why is the space devoid of life? What has happened? What kind of nature still exists? Is there any hope of another space, one that has not been emptied out? Which matrix are we dealing with? Where do the dark entrances lead? What is the origin of the strange and peculiarly religious aura in some of the paintings?

While searching for answers, associations and recollections of the films of Russian director and artist Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky become relevant. If the premise is that Mühsam, in mantra-like manner, paints a kind of "zone" comparable to the one in the 1979 film "Stalker," then the art-historical and the socio-political interpretations of his work are able to blend and lead to results that address societal issues in their broadest definition.

An area has been evacuated, closed off, and is guarded by the military. The "stalker," a pathfinder or scout of sorts, makes a living by illegally guiding people past the cordon and taking them inside the zone.

In some ways, Mühsam's mission is the same as the stalker's; we are the ones being led into the zone.

We find examples of this in real life, too: The nuclear disasters of 1986 and 2011, the abandoned tracts of land in Ukraine, around the cities of Chernobyl and Prypiat, and Fukushima in Japan. If we use these catastrophes as starting points, our vague premonitions, which we project into some of the more contemplative paintings, seem to be confirmed: Something is not right here. The time that is depicted in the artworks is as frozen as that in the tale of "Sleeping Beauty." One cannot help but think that there might be no "after," no foreseeable future – not for nature, nor humanity, nor for anything else. Only the recognition of Mühsam's pictorial aims can act like the prince's kiss, lift the curse, and counteract the painter's grave visions.

Art is charged – this applies to Tarkovsky, too – with a noble mission: to actually impart knowledge and comprehension. The apocalyptic mood stands in opposition to the discovery of truth, which allows us to see the "absolute picture" and leads us to the recognition of its shortcomings, which in turn are also our own. Mühsam the artist, just like Tarkovsky the artist, is entirely unselfish; he sees himself and his art as part of a web of reality-based revelations. The only thing that both artists leave up to us is the process of comprehension, along with the route we choose to get there.

It is evident that this is not conveyed through the kind of superficial realism that immediately triggers an eye-opening realization. Mühsam's pictures take us to task. They make demands on our imagination and the grammar of bearing witness, as well as our powers of association and structured thinking. And finally, indeed inevitably, they demand of us to formulate and construct our own understanding. In this intensely absorbing activity our initial intuitions are transformed into the shared knowledge of a poetic, subjective logic. The seemingly peaceful and stable appearance first suggested to us by the artist's iconography, the clear, simplified buildings, the lighting, the isolated fragments and the landscape itself ultimately reveal themselves as an expression of an unstable and invisible system. As viewers, we can engage in this process of recognition via a kind of "mapping". We create our own maps. By blending free association – with all of its unavoidable contradictions – and cognitive techniques of filtering, we engage in a sort of "mind mapping" that ultimately adheres to certain structures of thinking, remembering and experiencing. We can admit that we have not found answers to all the questions and still rest assured that we are being elevated to a new level of understanding. These paintings, though meticulously composed, do not at all spell out fixed meanings.

Within ourselves, the space for contemplation and recognition is expanded, followed by the final conclusion: Those who carry the deep and far-ranging implications of our actions within themselves and allow them to ripen will be able to recognize them.