Vernissage „Weinlese“ 24.10.2004

Dietmar Brixy – Vines

An expanse of colours, structures and lines seem to make the canvas explode. Vines and tendrils spread throughout the picture like veins penetrating the foreground and the background, ramifying and encompassing the whole painting giving it its inner as well as outer structure.

This cycle of paintings of vines and grapes obviously offers more than meets the eye. But the first question certainly is: Why does a painter whom we thought to know from his former pictures of distances all of a sudden turn to his native region, the Palatinate, an environment where he has his roots. Well, first of all there was the tremendous task of reconstructing the Pumpwerk turning it into his new home inside his old one – you could call it a challenge which took up his energies for several years leaving hardly any room for his artistic work unless you think of his efforts at the architectural changes needed and interior design. When this task was completed, turning to what was near was the obvious thing to do. An old vine which the artist had got acted as stimulus and was to stimulate him in the following months.

Looking at the paintings more closely we first of all notice the many layers of colour which form the pictures as such, put on with brush, hand or spatula and then partly scratched off again. At this level you can read the paintings as topographical landscapes disclosing their structure and inner coherence. There are lines, spaces and fluid movements; the colours have flooded the canvas like lava. Of course, we can perceive concrete shapes, recognise vines and grapes, and yet these are ephemeral, can hardly be grasped as if one looked at an impenetrable thicket or network without being able to tell which is the foreground and which the background. But this is not all: In some way colour and form emancipate themselves on the canvas and almost seem to lead their own lives. In his paintings Brixy achieves a degree of abstraction which could also survive easily without any hints at figurative reference.

Speaking of figure(s): Our painter would not be Brixy unless he hid a figure in the painting here and there. It has always been the aim of his style of painting to capture vitality, the very flow of life, and therefore man and nature form an imperative and natural whole in his pictures.

But let us return to the colours once more. Our eyes can bathe in a feast of extremely diversified colours, not only ecstatically, but also following the long tradition of colouring by adding colour to colour, putting small blots of colour next to larger spots in well-planned patterns, thus accentuating the depth and texture of the material. By scraping upper layers of colour away, the colours come into relief, lower layers being uncovered and together with the upper layers sometimes form a chameleonlike changeable pattern, creating constantly varying spaces of colour. However, even though an extreme dynamic breaks through, there are also zones of calm, of contemplation, and although these paintings seem to know no boundaries, the part chosen always betrays an intented limitation making the painting reach out at the same time.

Maybe Brixy’s pictures can be characterised best by calling them paintings of moods and emotions; moving from cool dominant blues and whites to warm yellow and orange colours and on to burning reds his palette of colours expresses the whole range of human sensitivities. Thus, the paintings offer topographies of emotion to the eyes of the viewer, yet at the same time we must not forget that they are vignettes of wine, the work of winegrowers and the delights of wine tasting. The tongue’s sensations mirror those of the eye – from the first sip to the final aftertaste.

Brixy’s works are equally determined by light and shade, compact and ephemeral shapes interact, and heaviness alternates with lightness. Some of his paintings are almost graphic and faintly recall those precious Japanese wood engravings of the great masters of their art, and similar to them the inner life of the paintings may be complex in its details and interior structures at times, but they are always shaped to form an artistic whole.

Besides there are also the small formats which of necessity are differently structured in comparison with the large paintings, like small pearls showing a concentration which makes the colour reliefs more visible. Both the large and the small paintings can truly be called portraits of vines and grapes having unique personalities of their own which are hinted at by the suggestive titles. This new cycle of paintings unmistakably shows the handwriting of the artist who displays the whole spectrum of his great art making the viewer avid to get more.

Dr. Martin Stather
Mannheimer Kunstverein