What You See Is What You Get? The Law of Spontaneous Composition

By Magdalena Kröner (2012)

Translated by Petra Pankow

The painting in question is monumental. Measuring 16x4 meters, it continues to grow as this text is being written. This unusually large and altogether unusual picture-project is the brainchild of Düsseldorf-based artists Walter Eul and Marc von Criegern (deckkraft). Photos show both of them together, in black and white, wearing breathing masks, at work on a canvas splattered with an abundance of painterly gestures. As if there wasn't just one but two Misters Pollock and as if Abstract Expressionism wasn't part of a rather remote history but of the immediate present. Photos like this suggest an art-historical continuity, which provokes instant opposition: What is it trying to be and what is it trying to become? Great artistic coup? Pure Megalomania?>> continue...