Artworks
Kabel [Cable]
painting
![Kabel [Cabo]](https://cms.macam.pt/storage/uploads/thumbs/inarte-work-3338_w840.jpg)
Date
2003
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
230,5 x 120,5 cm
Tied to the Dresden school of painting, the work of German artist Eberhard Havekost explores the parallels between the systemic ideas of perfection and the modes of ideal image construction. Taking his personal archive of photographs and video footage as a point of departure for his work, his paintings investigate the relationship between painted images and their photographic sources. Alluding rather than to photographic precision of reproducing a given reality, by the treatment of the image and applied painterly gesture, Havekost distorts the depicted image, assuming and enhancing some of its assumed imperfections, thus bringing the work closer to life.
Based on a scanned, stretched, and photoshopped photographic reference depicting a block of modernistic apartments, - Kabel, 2003,
becomes characteristic for its minimalist geometry. Addressing the world of digital image production manipulation, limitless image availability, encapsulation, and stripped of human presence, this work becomes a stilled depiction of an anonymous and through its execution, dematerialized urban context. Havekost echoes the legacy of Modern painting while pointing to a sense of hollowness and formal density, echoing the objects artificiality, in this case, through a piece of architecture. The approximate image of a building's balconies with orange awnings in alternating smooth-coloured patches, creates a formal rhythm in counterpoint to the stillness and static of the represented object.
Breaking the surface's impenetrability, three cables reaching out beyond the canvas's borders in the lower right corner creates a cut between pictorial elements, in opposition to a remnant of sky beyond the concrete mass in the upper left corner, leading to a perspective of upward escape. This painting, thus introducing a new geometry suggestive of a revised optical perception of the world of objects and their abstraction, uses the tools characteristic for contemporary image production and depiction. Kabel becomes a reflection on the increasingly digital reality characteristic for our present condition.
MC
Based on a scanned, stretched, and photoshopped photographic reference depicting a block of modernistic apartments, - Kabel, 2003,
becomes characteristic for its minimalist geometry. Addressing the world of digital image production manipulation, limitless image availability, encapsulation, and stripped of human presence, this work becomes a stilled depiction of an anonymous and through its execution, dematerialized urban context. Havekost echoes the legacy of Modern painting while pointing to a sense of hollowness and formal density, echoing the objects artificiality, in this case, through a piece of architecture. The approximate image of a building's balconies with orange awnings in alternating smooth-coloured patches, creates a formal rhythm in counterpoint to the stillness and static of the represented object.
Breaking the surface's impenetrability, three cables reaching out beyond the canvas's borders in the lower right corner creates a cut between pictorial elements, in opposition to a remnant of sky beyond the concrete mass in the upper left corner, leading to a perspective of upward escape. This painting, thus introducing a new geometry suggestive of a revised optical perception of the world of objects and their abstraction, uses the tools characteristic for contemporary image production and depiction. Kabel becomes a reflection on the increasingly digital reality characteristic for our present condition.
MC