Christoph
Kern uses old master knowledge of the material of painting with almost
scientific obsessiveness to ‚breed cubes’. In his
investigations Christoph Kern follows different tracks: cubes imploding
in space, gyrating in science – fiction - like structures that
evoke connotations like Star Wars or Kubrick’s 2001. Or
monolithic cubes that seem to all but eliminate pictorial space in
their attempt to push towards and overflow the edges. And, most
recently, a focus on futuristic landscapes that appear to have been
generated by the cubes themselves, yet in which the cubes tend more
towards dissolution.
Kern’s paintings are an accumulated
history of their own making. The paintings are worked up in many
layers, beginning with the initial scenario under investigation,
setting the scene. With each progressive layer the cubes’
evolution, their growth, colour, position and movement in space as well
as their realtionship towards each other is traced, the positions at
which they arrive are tested and pushed towards a point at which the
image can rest. This stage is documented before the painting process
continues. Pentimenti and animated films show the different stages of
one painting’s transformation and are a way for the viewer to
share in the painting’s evolution.
What makes Kern’s
paintings powerful is that in the end the paintings generate meaning by
evoking specific situations and depicting very particular worlds that
seem utterly convincing, sometimes even familiar, even though they
originate in the purlely formal and abstract.