Image Courtesy of Helga Kreuzritter
Much has been written and said about the versatility of the German artist Helga Kreuzritter for good reason. Looking through her body of work can make one dizzy in a paradoxically stable way, as she has indeed explored things to the point of no Beginnings. Kreuzritter has the know-how of mining and hollowing the myriads of ways to distill the essentials of her subjects and their vulnerabilities up to the surface. We can view her go about her ways as if an academic, an intellectual and studious artist or a scientist, just as well as having the chance to see her at work as an anthropologist, historian and/or an archeologist.
Personally I find the raw quality of the artist’s works and its untaught-ness that she is auspicious enough to still find after much schooling indeed; to be her utmost stupendous. I feel it is this raw, coarse and sore quality that comes out and makes us sensitive in return as the viewer. Although Kreuzritter is certainly refined in her works -and in detail too-, we find the immediacy of connecting to her work through the vulnerability of being human. Partly animal, human and maybe a bit more, if you like… The emergency of our exposure that is simultaneously our accountability and responsibility is what makes the difference at the end of the day between evolution and involution. If there could ever be a question on the freedom of choice, I suppose a choice between evolution and involution would be the fundamental one we would have to make. Are we going to keep walking and evolve super-slowly yet surely, or are we going to go against the stride, take discomfort and uneasiness without rest upon ourselves to bend our circle, make rules new in each moment and take the risk of being lost in the forest for the sake of involution? If we can that is…
As an antithesis to the dexterous and multi-faceted attributes found in the artist Helga Kreuzritter’s works, and furthermore; we find great continuity and stability. When perceived in retrospect, the body of her work coaxes time into nullification. It is almost not possible to find a gap between two of the artist’s works, even if picked randomly, say among 1986 and 2010. Again, given the flexibility of the work, whether be in the subject matter, emotions, social and political conditions, thoughts, belief systems, techniques, materials and all other considerations; the amazing continuity of what Kreuzritter has communicated without delay-keeping the spirit of a self-taught artist beyond her technical and academic abilities, calls for a celebration of Helga Kreuzritter at her five decades of sustainability without wavering.
I just remember and deeply appreciate looking at the artist’s latest series of works “Ad Infinitum”; how extraordinarily prolific an artist Kreuzritter is, to top it off. These are probably the most innovative of Kreuzritter’s works in reminiscence. Each work of the series doubles itself endlessly depending on the viewer’s overall perception and impression, very much prompted by the angle of the incident and the reflected light, its brightness and color, and by colors and shapes present in front of the painting. This is the AluPainting; a technical approach developed by Kreuzritter since 2008 that is still in the process of refinement. Watercolors are applied to the polished surface of an aluminum sheet. Prior to the painting process the surface is specially treated, with the result that small remains of the grease present on the surface due to the production process are left over, whereas other parts become free of fat. Watercolors can stick to the metal surface only in parts that are free of fat. It is the artist’s skillful hands that locate the different regions in such a way that the desired painting is created. As certain parts of the painting are free of color, hence they reflect the incident light. For example, a blue shirt across will be reflected blue as one of the colors in the painting. After all one can say that the paintings of this kind are interactive and the viewer influences the impression directly. Critics have already seen and documented a kind of mystic landscape with no end and subtle deviations ad infinitum in Kreuzritter’s authentic work. I wish to add that each of these AluPaintings is indeed a living extension of the artist’s prolific disposition.
What is it that Kreuzritter has been doubling ad infinitum for five decades, one might ask? We already know that the artist’s subject matters in general are profound. Yet she deals with politics of gender as well tying the unbiased issue to a most profound tissue in the Genesis.
In her relief painting titled “Genesis- Eve was first” Kreuzritter depicts, with a smile, her insurrection against a predicated and absurdly supposed male superiority. Eve was indeed first in Adam from the beginning-less beginning, in the sublime text of Unity.
The Second Chapter of Genesis (of the Edenic State) reads:
(2:21) YHVH ELOHIM caused unconsciousness to fall upon the Adam and he slept. He took one of his sides and closed over the flesh in its place. (2:22) YHVH ELOHIM built the side that he took from the Adam into a woman and he brought her to the Adam. (2:23) The Adam said: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This shall be called woman, for from man she was taken.” (Gen. 2:21-2:23)
Conversely, Kreuzritter’s small group of works titled “Suspended” which started out as watercolors and turned into another experimental technique of sculpting that the artist now utilizes. The “Suspended” are the ones who have no other but one goal in mind, as their intention is to climb up the ladders of success and hierarchy. It is a positive when they actually come to the realization that while climbing they have lost the ground.
We find Helga Kreuzritter’s unusual combination of dark humor, sharpness, poetic sarcasm and romanticism in some of her fellow symbolists such as Edvard Munch, Edgar Allen Poe, Claude Debussy, Friedrich Nietzsche and T. S. Eliot. The artist concurrently brings to mind shades of dreamy masterworks by her fellow abstract expressionists as well, such as Vasiliy Kandinsky, Willem de Kooning, Mark di Suvero and Jane Frank to name a few.
Helga Kreuzritter’ s recent studies of anthropologic myths, especially the Australian Dreamtime myths, well as having long been studying the Aborigines, their earlier and contemporary way of life, moreover finally traveling through Australia to talk to people including Aborigines and studying their very old aboriginal works in situ, led Kreuzritter to experimenting intimately with all this research and input. Eventually Kreuzritter created her own interpretations of aboriginal works and her own combination of technique and style. A great example is the artist’s piece titled “Dreamtime- Guardians of the Secret” which was sold to one of the prominent art collectors in Turkey during the Contemporary Istanbul 2010 Art Fair.
Helga Kreuzritter’s work is dense yet light. She is one of the few contemporary artists who can ‘fill in the blanks’ of her mastery-in-multiple-innovative-techniques; with meaningfulness. We are fulfilled as the viewer knowing that she has made tremendous efforts to portray translucency.
Tchera Niyego
