Matthias Reinmuth

upcoming

Gefährten

Groupshow

18 November 2023 - March 2024

Museum gegenstandsfreier Kunst

Otterndorf


mgk-otterndorf.de

Sweets & Treats

Groupshow

11 Nov - Dec 22, 2023

Edward Cella Gallery

Los Angeles


edwardcella.com

Elective Affinities  Raffaele Cioffi - Matthias Reinmuth  27 September - 4 November 2023  Milano

Galeria Monopoli / curated by Alberto Barranco di Valdivieso

Elective Affinities    exhibition views

Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen blühn    200x160cm  2022

Cioffi. Reinmuth. Elective Affinities.
Exhibition curated by Alberto Barranco di Valdivieso


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote his most famous novel "The Elective Affinities" (1809) taking its title from the term
invented by the physicist Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler in his "Physikalisches Wörterbuch" ("Dictionary of Physics",
1787-1796). Goethe was alluding to that particular chemical phenomenon whereby two associated elements, under the
simultaneous action of two other elements endowed with particular properties, split, associating with the latter two and
forming two new pairs by law of mutual attraction. The novel analyzes the development of a similar phenomenon in the
sentimental life of two couples who are the protagonists of the story.This vision has led, in common parlance, to define the
field of positive or negative sharing in interpersonal relationships as "chemistry".
Therefore "elective affinities" which is a scientific term, which later became specific to literature, reaches us as a universal
expression, between two different entities, of the cohesive capacity for points of psychological similarity, of intentions we
could say, placed in relation with other external agents.
Raffaele Cioffi (Desio, 1974) and Matthias Reinmuth (Bad Wimpfen, Germany, 1974) have agreed to confront each other in
an exhibition which, by showing works from the period 2022-2023, entitled "Elective Affinities", aims to trigger an
experiment of comparison, defined by affinity of intent and differences of method, which communicates to the observer
not only two different worlds by geographical cultural affiliation, one Mediterranean and the other Northern European, but
above all two ways to arrive at the same result through the common "pictorial family" of aniconic abstractism. In both the
story is built on instinctive emotional sensations and not through the mimesis of real forms, this allows to educate in the
single user suggestive images and an always different personal story, which is automatically built during eye contact with
the work. A dynamic that we can find in music, especially in contemporary compositions, from Stockhausen to Cage, in
cold jazz, in electronic anharmonic music, or musical scores built from elastic, fluid harmonic geometries that do not follow
linear rhetorical structures; exactly fluid as are the compositional forms of these two authors whose use of color follows
destructural logics: for Cioffi it is signic frayng and for Reinmuth it is fluid dissolution. Furthermore, the two painters differ
from each other in their working method.
Cioffi paints in the well-renovated studio in an old courtyard house in quiet Lissone, just outside Milan. He works on
canvases already mounted and placed on the wall, and is fast; he uses candid canvases, he works a lot, continuously, he
often makes drafts on small sheets of paper, then starts painting after preparing the canvases with a base color that will
be the support chromatic of which perhaps only an edge or a halo will remain; while he paints he performs a kind of dance,
first approaching the canvas using small strokes and then moving away and, with his arm outstretched, placing wider
brushstrokes, and so on, while classical music fills the room in the background. He works with a short and intense
concentration, which needs pauses and restarts. The works are finished in a few days with minimal variations from the
initial project and are rarely modified afterwards. By now he has such an exact and tested practice that the only surprises
catch him when an intensity of color or a halo does not satisfy him perhaps already when the work is finished. He works
with greater pleasure on large dimensions, owns enormous and very heavy looms donated by Claudio Olivieri, but in recent
times he has also used very small canvases.
Reinmuth paints on the floor of the large studio in the former Flugplatz Johannisthal, the first historic Berlin airport of 1909,
today in East Berlin, among the old Zeppelin hangars (unfortunately) being demolished; a large, very bright space of
extraordinary charm, a place with a rationalist construction that is now a housing for artists (Studio Building); he acts much
slower than his colleague, accepting waiting as part of the work system; he often leaves the canvases blank on the wooden
floor, with just a first surface treatment; he finally decides to pour the colors creating a synesthesia in which even the
randomness of the reaction on the dirt on the canvas is part of the genesis of the work. He preferably works with the
vertical format which favors, even psychologically, the sense of gravity but also of the upward direction; appreciates large
sizes but medium formats are the ones he prefers. The composition of the works can have long phases, with interruptions,
rethinking and resumptions, and finally the finishing treatments further change the initial chromatic assumptions. Another
element that apparently distinguishes the two painters is the "character" of painting. If Cioffi has a mechanical and spatialist
attitude, that is, he wants to create ultra-dimensional spaces inside the work, he does so by directing exactly all the phases
of the project and of the painting which, in his case, dries in a short time, returning a result that he can control at any
moment. On the other hand Reinmuth, through a more meditative work, in which control is not total, builds the pictorial
structure for fluid color overlaps which, as it dries, changes and, thanks to the waxed finishes, further modifies the
transparencies and intensities, increasing the sense of color depth. Reinmuth assumes Time as a regulating element not
only of the compositional practice but of the final result itself, because it is precisely the randomness of the effects
produced by the passage of time on the color that defines the composition. In this way his paintings seem to palpitate and
physically absorb the observer while Cioffi's color moves by vibration and fragmentation. Cioffi's colors are visibly
inhomogeneous because the multicolored system is made up of small "flakes" of different colors that overlap each other
giving an effect that up close reveals a multitude of colors while from a distance it synthesizes the colors for pulsating
backgrounds. Reinmuth's color does not include any sign except halos, unraveling and sometimes spots, it has an oily
amalgam that seems to change continuously, creating iridescences, like the halos of naphtha on water.
GALLERIA MONOPOLI
Despite the differences, these two types of aniconic painting use color to transform individual sensations into visions.
Therefore, as in the system of Goethean affinities, the two artists, firmly belonging to their fields of training, are placed in
close contact in the neutral and engaging place of the exhibition space, under the impetus of a curator who has compared
them (here the two external disturbing elements: the space that contains the confrontation, the curator who instructs it). A
situation that at least momentarily recalibrates their identities according to a relationship that pushes similarities,
concordances, deep affinities more than formal differences. It seems useful, then, to describe with greater precision the
elements that theoretically and formally distinguish and unite the two painters.
Raffaele Cioffi, since beginnings in Brera Academy in Milan, was fascinated from the outset by the Color Field of Mark
Rothko and the strings of Morris Louis, as well as by the multifaceted pictorial practice of Gerhard Richter, he subsequently
operated a detachment from those experiences calibrating in recent years a painting of crumbling of colour, of vaporization
for painted halos through the use of a "pivoting" and visible sign, and of chromatic superimpositions with a "porous" effect
that only vaguely indicate the existence of demarcations and shapes. In recent times, if anything, Cioffi's search for the
"painting of optical colour" typical of the impressionists and Venetian spatialists such as Tancredi has sharpened. These
vibrant halos, which Cioffi has called "Thresholds", are metaphysical passages (almost Heideggerian "limen") between the
dimension of the observer (the real place in which he finds himself, i.e. the space of the work) and another dimension, not
objective, suggested within the spaces of the painting but actually created in the mind of the viewer thanks to optical

chromatic suggestions. In this sense we wanted to define his romantic Post-Analytical painting; obviously aniconic,
undoubtedly inspired by analytics, executed with hand and brush, with oil pigments on canvas, executed on the wall. A
painting that the artist wants to produce sensational effects, therefore pushing towards a sentimental and evocative reading
even if without any aid of symbols or objective forms.
Matthias Reinmuth, trained at the Berlin Academy with Georg Baselitz and Dirk van der Meulen, therefore the imprint is
neo-expressionist; despite this, even if he graduated with Baselitz, we seem to intuit that from Meulen, oriented towards a
less formal but certainly material research, he learned the terms of expanded color and of a sign that tends to find in the
very genesis of the mixing of colors the sense of “emergence” and therefore of expression. Soon the painter's work
detached itself more and more from expressionism to arrive, in recent years, at a painting of post-analytical matrix. Over
time he approaches analytical painting, articulating a technique of mixing colors that certainly also draws from the long
Californian experience. In reality, just thinking of Reinmuth's Californian experience, his are paintings that clearly recall the
(non-pictorial) suggestions of the "Light & Space" movement which was born in California, in Venice, and which inevitably
also changed the perception and the management of color in painting, from the 1970s onwards. Let us add that the painter
was probably also inspired by the bright colors observed on his numerous trips to Southeast Asia. Reinmuth articulates
his style through the use of solvents and waxes which dissolve the previously poured colors (he works on the surface)
creating effects of fusion and transformation of colors precisely through the mechanical movement that the overlaps create.
By carefully reading the changes in his works over time, we notice a progressive disappearance of elements that disturb
the nuance of his colors (spots, signs), which over the years has led him to a "super-tonal" painting. Precisely in this regard,
observing his works in the exhibition, I recognize the same condition of Cioffi's Post-Analytical painting or of works that
are the result of an automatic mechanics of painting for which, both Reinmuth and Cioffi, through the well-defined
technique, manage to build a complex, rich, variegated chromatic system, capable of influencing the observer by
suggesting images that appear recognizable by pareidolia or when, observing the Rorschach spots or the clouds in the
sky, our mind recognizes, in an absolutely individual way, objects of reality by shapeless shapes; an automatic process
that tends to order what is not understood into something that the brain knows. Undoubtedly this type of effect is present
in Reinmuth's painting more than in Cioffi's much more "graphic" one, however both create strong optical stimulations that
strike the unconscious producing, as mentioned, "landscapes of the mind" and feelings that inevitably, precisely because
the brain works this way, they trigger images of memory. These two artists, in two different ways, but with the same
abstract-aniconic system, and a life philosophy that unites them much more than it would seem from the different origins
of each, express a lyrical, poetic, romantic character which is evident from the intense satisfaction that their colorful works
express, while not giving way to figurative didacticism. Certainly they have different techniques but a very similar attitude
towards colour, even if for one it is a sign and for the other it is tonal; as color is the medium capable of stimulating a
creative reaction in the observer. In all of this we read the desire to involve the outside, the viewer, which is also expressed
in their personality undoubtedly characterized by a strong shared inspiration towards others.
Cioffi and Reinmuth present two modes of chromatic travel through time; "elective affinities" in different Weltanschauungen
but which, thanks to this unprecedented comparison, become evident in the sign of a color which, to paraphrase
Hofmannsthal, transforms itself and tells the depth of dreams on the surface of a canvas.

Romeo 100x80cm 2022

Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht 100x80cm 2022

Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glühn 100x80cm 2022

Dahin! Dahin Möcht’ ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn! 100x80cm

Glow 14 Jan - 11 March 2023 ASPN  Leipzig

Mission (Turquoise) 280x195cm 2021

Mission (Bras de la Seine lila) 230x190cm 2021

Orange is the new Black 190x160cm 2022

Glow (Westside) 130x100cm 2022

Glow   Jan 14 - March 11 2023  ASPN, Leipzig exhibition views

Chromatic Raphsody  11 -26 Nov 2022    Edward Cella Art&Architecture  Los Angeles

Glimpse (oceandrive) 170x140cm 2022

Mission   10.10.2021 - 20.03.2022   Museum gegestandsfreier Kunst, Otterndorf Germany

Mission (rggb) 60x50cm 2021

Hamlet  90x80cm 2016

Cathalogue Interview with Dirctor Dr. Ulrike Schick, MGK Otterndorf 


“Je ne fais que regarder ce que m’a montré l’univers, pour en rendre témoignage avec mon pinceau.”
Claude Monet


Dr.Ulrike Schick:


Dear Matthias Reinmuth, it’s so nice to have you and your works here and to have the privilege of immersing
myself in the depths of your colours...
At our first meeting, it was already clear to me that we share many things in common. Apart from my
enthusiasm for your delicate and elegant painting, one of these is our mutual love of globe-trotting – with a
preference for Asia!
You're well familiar with those climes. You know of mouth-watering dishes and of places that evoke a great
sense of longing.
I have to say, for my part, that I feel these sensuous pleasures in your pictures. There also seems to be a
profound yearning for scents, for colours and for nature, for city vistas and landscapes within you.
Tell me, when were you overtaken by the certainty of pursuing an artistic path with all the consequences it
entails?


M. R.:
I think my preoccupation with painting and the question of what art is became so essential to me that there
was no turning back when I was 18 or 19. You said it: with all the consequences it entails.


U.S.:
So, it was painting from the start, without any “detours”, for example via sculpture. Colour “possessed you,”
to quote Paul Klee?


M.R:
Yes. I believe that we all have a direct emotional access to colour. It has an immediate presence, cold or
warm, sorrowful or tantalising. For me, it’s much more powerful, much more sensuous than words.

U.S.:
Are there any colours you don’t like?


M.R.:
All colours are amazing. At times, some are more amazing than others, but that changes constantly. I don’t
really have a favourite colour. Yellow is a colour that I seldom use as a main player. But it does appear very
frequently as a mixed colour. Yellow makes everything much more vivid, much warmer. In some regions,
however, it’s the most important colour of all and, in China, yellow was traditionally reserved for the
emperor exclusively.
There are also interesting phenomena such as collective favourite colours. In Germany, for example, cars
predominantly have cool, sober paint finishes. Here, they are either white, black, red, metallic silver,
occasionally dark blue. Taxis tend to be beige, but overall, the colours of the cars are very sedate and
restrained.
In South East Asia, the streets are much more colourful, louder!
There, luscious pink, vibrant yellow or green predominate and very often gold, too, when a Buddha is
standing on the roadside.


U.S.:
In some pictures, I see echoes of calligraphy, and of old-master
landscape painting. I see reminiscences of my beloved Claude Monet in the watery dark blue ground of
another painting. Do you feel an affinity with great historical or
more recent painters?


M.R.:
Without wanting to speak for all painters, you always really live and work together with 500 or 600 years of
painting history. They’re always there with you. You know about what’s already been painted and you try to
find your own way within that. There are chapters that you particularly like, which you just can’t do without,
that you’d like to reinterpret in your own way.
In the black and white painting you mentioned, Zero, I was more concerned with finding my own personal
chapter of “paint in motion”. To mark a point where the sensuousness of a red, a blue or a yellow doesn’t
detract from the movement of the paint.
There’s one painting , mission (giverny), which is not directly an interpretation of a Monet
garden picture. But, for fun, I picked out all the shades I could find from a certain painting of his garden by
Monet. I mixed them up in the approximate quantities in which they appear in the painting and then allowed
them to run into one another using my way of painting. Lots of the colours disappeared into barely
distinguishable shades, but I essentially used exactly the same ones as Monet had in his painting.
Sure, Claude Monet is an amazing and important painter.


U.S.:
You suggested that the diptych  reminds you of Monet's all-over paintings at the Orangerie and
the Jeu de Paume in Paris...


M.R:
Monet was the first person to paint a panorama that was free of political narratives, where colour and light
appear as the protagonists in their place. Before, there were only really historical genre scenes representing
particular and specific religious or societal events. In that sense, Monet is a sort of godfather of non-political
narrative art. Now and again, he stands amiably on the sidelines, watching on benevolently.


U.S:
Your exhibition is titled mission. There’s a wordplay hidden in there: The English word “mission”, the German
word “mischen” (mixing) and even the word “vision” spring to mind. You already elucidated the title at the
start of your artist's statement. Do you always have a vision? Is it a different one in each painting or an all

encompassing one?


M.R.:
Well, having visions would make you more of a prophet than a painter. But in the sense of an idea or farsightedness,

“vision” would apply more readily.

The first thing that pops up is really an image of something,
before a word or a descriptive action come to the fore. There’s of course also the hunch, I mean an indistinct
notion of something that can’t be described in words, but might be through a picture. What I find even more
interesting in terms of the English word “vision” is the wordplay with its German homonym “wischen”
(wiping). Both mischen and wischen are actions used in painting. In the same way, there’s a vacillation
between the English word “mission” and the German “mischen” − like the colours in the pictures.


U.S.:
What was the idea behind your selection of paintings, which you chose back at the studio following your
visits here?


M.R.:
For the space on the first floor, I wanted to create an environmental situation, a kind of panorama. I’d had
something like that in mind for a while. A colour resonance that interweaves and vibrates and hums.
With the paintings on the second floor, it’s more about how they were arrived at and several different
possibilities of and approaches to dealing with colour, about showing different methods of making a picture,
which led to the way the pictures are right now.


U.S.:
Many of the paintings shown here in fact have their origins on your studio floor.
Since when and why have you engaged in this practice of using the ground you work on as the ground for
your paintings?


M.R.:
I don't explicitly stage the studio floor as the painting ground. The practice has evolved through a variety of
working processes. I lay out the canvas on the studio floor straight from the roll and then, after random
traces have been left during my work on top of them, I stretch them and then begin with the “actual”
painting of a picture. For me, it’s mainly a purely technical, quite pragmatic, process.
Of course, after a period of working, there are sometimes moments when, suddenly, a dramatic incident or a
certain colour resonance on the floor prompt me to immediately mount the canvas onto a stretcher. It’s
about capturing the accidental, which then reverberates as background noise during the painting process.
That’s the interesting thing for me.


U.S.:
During the artist talk traditionally held on the Sunday morning after the opening, someone asked you a
question about the light. The light in the studio no doubt plays an important role for you. Put bluntly, does
your painting orient itself according to the seasons?


M.R.:
Actually, it wasn’t really the four seasons that were being referred to during the talk. I think it was more to do
with the correlation between light and painting. My pictures are predominantly painted in daylight, but their
entire narrative only unfolds with the changes in light incidence from one hour to the next, from morning
until evening.
The situation here at the museum is quite a particular one: a classical white-cube space with artificial light
and without windows to the outside. That’s a challenge for my painting, which lives off the constant slight
changes in the light. Artificial light is always first of all ice cold, even if it's a warm white.


It makes the pictures look more artificial. This actually opens up a link to our contemporary engagement with
images, to our view of the world, which is constantly filtered through digital monitors, through smartphone
screens, which shape our view of the world. After all, the travel photo on the tablet has now become more
important than recounting what we’ve seen.
For most visitors today, a visit to the Louvre means seeing everything through their mobile, simultaneously
documenting the fact of having been there and what they could have seen there. And the same applies to
almost everything. We no longer even look straight ahead when we dare to venture into the “outside world”,
but stagger through the streets like zombies between the Google Maps directions displayed on our
smartphone and the latest pictures on Instagram. Each day, we swipe back and forth between hundreds of
images of the world and, in the evening, we don’t even remember what we’ve seen. Our society is living
within a perpetual digital media background noise.


U.S.:
Dear Matthias Reinmuth, thank you for these insights into your oeuvre, which is also intended as a preview.
I think we’ve again succeeded in getting our senses to vibrate with colour, breaking down barriers and
allowing colours to flow out of the paintings and into our souls. It’s clear to me that it requires courage, great
courage, to accept and allow this sensation. What is required on the part of the viewers is time, peace and
tranquillity, pleasure and energy, as well as contemplation. And it’s you who give us the appropriate
template.


M.R.:
Dear Ulrike Schick, many thanks for the invitation and for offering me the opportunity to hold this exhibition
at your museum.


Otterndorf 2022







U.S.

Lieber Matthias, es ist schön, Dich und Deine Arbeiten bei uns zu haben und in Deinen Farbtiefen ertrinken zu dürfen!
Schon bei meinem ersten Treffen mit Dir, war klar, wir haben viele Gemeinsamkeiten! Mal abgesehen von
meiner Begeisterung für Deine delikate und vornehme Malerei, ist es die Freude am Weltenbummeln. Mit
Präferenz für Asien!!!
Du kennst Dich bestens aus in diesen Gefilden! Du kennst Gerichte, die das Wasser im Munde zusammen
laufen lassen und Orte, die Sehnsucht erzeugen! Ich kann sagen, diese Sinnenfreude spüre ich in Deinen
Bildern! Auch eine Sehnsucht nach den Gerüchen, den Farben und Landschaften, nach den Stadt- und
Landschaften liegt ganz tief in ihnen! Sag mir, wann hat sich das Virus in Dir breit gemacht mit
all seinen Konsequenzen, das Künstlertum zu leben?


M.R.:
Ich glaube mit Achtzehn, Neunzehn wurde bei mir die Beschäftigung mit Malerei und die Frage, was ist Kunst, so wichtig, dass es kein Zurück mehr gab. Mit allen
Konsequenzen die sich daraus ergeben.

U.S.:
Es war also gleich die Malerei, es gab keinen „Umweg“ z.B. über die Bildhauerei. Die Farbe hatte Dich, um mit
Paul Klee zu sprechen! 


M.R.:
Ja! Ich glaube wir haben alle einen unmittelbaren, emotionalen Zugang zu Farbe. Sie ist sofort präsent, kalt
oder warm, traurig oder aufreizend. Für mich ist Sie viel stärker, viel sinnlicher als Worte.


U.S.:
Gibt es eine Farbe die Du nicht magst?


M.R.:

Alle Farben sind toll. Manchmal manche toller als gerade andere, aber das ändert sich ständig. Es gibt
keine wirkliche Lieblings Farbe. Gelb ist für mich eine Farbe die ich seltener als Hauptakteur benutze. Sie
taucht ganz oft nur als Mischfarbe auf. Gelb macht an sich alles viel bunter, viel wärmer. Dafür ist Sie in
manchen Regionen die wichtigste Farbe überhaupt. In China war Gelb traditionell als Farbe nur dem Kaiser
vorbehalten
Es gibt ja auch so interessante Phänomene wie kollektive Lieblingsfarben. In Deutschland zum Beispiel
dominiert bei Autos eine kühle, distanzierte Lackierung. Autos sind hier Weiß, Schwarz, Rot, silbriges Metallic, vereinzelt dunkelblau, vielleicht noch beige Taxis, aberim ganzen ist die Farbe des Persönlichen Automobils hier sehr reduziert und unterkühlt.
In Südost Asien sind die Straßen viel bunter, kräftiger. Dort dominiert mehr ein lustvolles Pink, Gelb oder Grün, und gerne noch Gold wenn ein Buddha am Straßenrand steht.

U.S.:
Ich sehe oben Anklänge an Kalligrafie (Seitenzahl der S/W Arbeit)- an altmeisterliche Landschaftsmalerei! Ich
finde meinen geliebten alten Claude Monet (Angabe der 2teiligen Arbeit) wieder in dem wasserdunkelblauen
Grund der Arbeit hier! Fühlst Du Dich verwandt zu alten oder jungen Meistern?


M.R.:
Ohne gleich für alle Maler sprechen zu wollen, aber man lebt und arbeitet ja auch immer mit Fünf- Sechshundert Jahren Malerei Geschichte zusammen. Die sind immer mit dabei. Man weiss was schon alles gemalt wurde und versucht seinen eigenen Weg darin zufinden. Da gibt es Kapitel die einem besonders gefallen, an denen man nicht vorbei kommt, die man selbst auch gerne einmal neuinterpretieren möchte.
Die Schwarz/ Weiss Arbeit die du erwähnst, „Zero“, da geht es für mich mehr darum einen Nullpunkt zu finden in meinem Kapitel von „sich bewegender Farbe“. Einen Punkt zu setzen, an dem keine Sinnlichkeit eines Rots oder Blaus oder Gelbs von der Bewegung der Farbe
ablenkt.
Es gibt die eine Arbeit , mission (giverny) .Das ist keine direkte Interpretation eines Monet Gartenbildes. Aber ich hatte mir den Spaß gemacht von diesem einen bestimmten Garten Gemälde von Monet alle Farbtöne heraus zu lesen, die ich finden konnte. Ich habe sie angemischt nach der ungefähren Menge wie
sie vorkommen auf de Bild und in meiner Malweise auf der Leinwand ineinander laufen lassen. Dabei sind ganz viele Töne in kleinen kaum mehr sichtbaren Schattierungen verschwunden, aber im Prinzip habe ich
alle Farben benutzt wie Monet in seinem Bild auch. Klar, Claude Monet ist ein grossartiger wichtiger Maler.


U.S.:
Du deutetest an, dass gerade die zweiteilige Arbeit Dich an die All Over Werke Monets in der
Orangerie und im Jeu de Paume in Paris erinnern…


M.R.:
Monet ist der erste der ein Panorama malte, das sich löst von politischen Erzählungen, wo die Farbe und das
Licht die Hauptakteure sind. Davor gab es eigentlich nur historische Genre Szenerien, die bestimmte und
konkrete Religiöse oder Gesellschaftliche Handlungen darstellten. Monet ist für nicht politisch erzählende Kunst eine Art Pate. Er steht ab und zu freundlich am Rand und schaut wohlwollend zu.


U.S.:
Deine Ausstellung trägt den Titel ‚mission‘. Es ist ja auch ein Wortspiel, das englische mission, das Deutsche
Mischen auch das Wort Vision drängt sich auf! Du hast diesen Titel ja in Deinem Exposé zu Beginn schon
erläutert. Hast Du eine Vision? In jedem Gemälde eine andere oder eine umgreifende?


M.R.:
Vermutlich wird man mit Visionen eher Prophet anstatt Maler. Das englische Vision allerdings, also die
Vorstellung oder die Weite Sicht, das trifft eher zu. Es taucht schon zuerst ein Bild von etwas auf bevor ein
Wort oder eine beschriebene Handlung sich in den Vordergrund spielt. Es gibt ja auch die Ahnung, also eine
unklare Idee von etwas, das sich nicht mit Worten aber viel eher mit einem Bild beschreiben lässt. Viel
spannender mit dem englischen Vision ist das Wortspiel von Vision und Wischen. Das Wischen ist wie das
Mischen eine Handlung in der Malerei. Genauso changiert das englische Wort Mission mit dem Wort
Mischen wie die Farbe auf den Bildern.


U.S.:
Was war die Idee bei der Auswahl der Arbeiten, die Du ja bereits im Atelier, nach Deinen Besuchen hier,
getroffen hast!


M.R.:
Für die Halle in der Ersten Etage wollte ich eine Raum Situation, eine Art Panorama machen. So etwas hatte
ich schon länger als Idee. Ein Farbklang der sich verwebt und schwingt und rauscht. Bei den Arbeiten auf der Zweiten Etage geht es mehr um den Weg dahin und mehrere unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten und Ansätze mit Farbe umzugehen, um verschiedene Methoden ein Bild zu machen, die dahin geführt haben, wie Bilder jetzt im Moment sind.


U.S.:
Viele Deiner hier gezeigten Gemälde finden ihren Ursprung ja auf dem Boden Deines Ateliers.
Seit wann und warum hast Du diese ‚Geschichte‘, dieses Benutzen des ‚Arbeitsgrundes‘ als Malgrund?


M.R.:
Ich inszeniere den Arbeitsgrund nicht expizit als Malgrund. Es ist viel einfacher. Es hat sich durch
verschiedene Arbeits Prozesse ergeben, das ich Leinwand frisch von der Rolle auf dem Atelier Boden
auslege, und sie, nachdem sich durch das darauf Arbeiten Zufalls Spuren angesammelt haben, aufspanne
und darauf mit der richtigen Malerei erst ein Bild beginne. Das ist für mich einmal ein rein technischer
Vorgang, ganz pragmatisch. Natürlich ergeben sich nach einer Zeit des Arbeitens auch Momente, wo eine bestimmte plötzlich auftauchende Dramatik, oder ein Farbklang des Bodens, dazu führt, das ich Sie sofort auf Keilrahmen aufspanne. Das Einfangen des Zufälligen, das beim Malen dann als Hintergrund Rauschen mitklingt, darum geht es dabei. Das ist für mich das Interessante.


U.S.:
Im Künstlergespräch, traditionell sonntagmorgens nach der Eröffnung, richtete man die Frage nach dem Licht an Dich. Das Licht im Atelier hat natürlich eine wichtige Funktion, orientiert sich überspitzt gefragt,

Deine Malerei
nach den Jahreszeiten?


M.R.:
Das tauchte im Gespräch aber nicht im Sinne von Vier Jahreszeiten auf. Ich denke es ging mehr darum, wie Licht mit der Malerei zusammen hängt. Die Bilder sind überwiegend bei Tageslicht gemalt und Ihre ganze
Erzählung entfaltet sich erst mit dem Wechsel des Lichteinfalls von Stunde zu Stunde, von Morgens bis
Abends.
Die Situation hier im Museum ist da eine ganz spezielle, aber klassische White Cube Situation mit artifiziellem, eigentlich total künstlichem Licht ohne Fenster nach draußen. Das ist für meine Malerei, die von ständigen kleinen Veränderungen des Lichts lebt, herausfordernd. Kunstlicht ist immer erst einmal eiskalt, auch wenn es ein warmes Weiß ist. Es macht Bilder an sich künstlicher. Aber hier öffnet es sich auch zu unserem Gegenwärtigen Umgang mit Bildern, zu unserer Sicht auf die Welt, die ständig gefiltert wird durch digitale Screens, durch Smartphone Flächen, die unseren Blick auf die Welt prägen. Das Reisefoto auf dem Pad ist mittlerweile ja viel wichtiger als das Erzählen von dem was man gesehen hat. Ein Besuch im Louvre heißt für die meisten Besucher heute, alles durch das Handy anzuschauen und gleichzeitig zu dokumentieren, das man auch da war und was man alles hätte gesehen haben können. Und das schließt fast alles mit ein. Wir schauen schon gar nicht mehr geradeaus, wenn wir uns in die „Draußen“ Welt wagen, sondern stolpern wie Zombies über die Straßen zwischen angezeigten Google Maps Hinweisen auf dem Phone und den Neuesten Bildern auf Instagram. Wir wischen jeden Tag hunderte Bilder der Welt hin und her und wissen am Abend gar nicht mehr was wir alles gesehen haben. Unsere Gesellschaft lebt in einem ständigen medialen, digitalen Grund-Rauschen.


U.S.:
Lieber Matthias Reinmuth, ich bedanke mich für diesen Einblick in Dein Œuvre, der auch ein Ausblick sein soll. Ich meine, es ist uns erneut gelungen, unsere Sinne mit Farbe zum Explodieren zu bringen; Grenzen
einzureißen, Farben aus den Gemälden heraus in unsere Seele fließen zulassen. Mir ist klar, dass Mut
dazu gehört; großer Mut, dieses Spüren zuzulassen, zu erlauben. Vor allem gehört von Seiten der Betrachter,
Zeit dazu, Muße, Freude und Energie wie Kontemplation. Die Vorlage gibst Du uns!


M.R. : Liebe Ulrike Schick, vielen Dank die
Einladung und das ich diese Ausstellung bei euch
realisieren konnte