tema celeste / contemporaryart, italian and international issue
Ausgabe Jan. / Feb. 2003
Interview with Ariane Beyn
The painter Katrin Plavcak (born 1970) has just recently moved from Vienna to Berlin. I met her for breakfast in a Cafe at Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin just around the corner from her new appartment.
Currently works of yours are shown in an impressive painting group show titeld "Lieber Maler, male mir ..." (Dear Painter, paint me...) in Vienna. The exhibition´s subtitle is: Radical Realism after Picabia. Here the notion of "realism" seems to refer mostly to the human figure which is subjected to "radical" irony and kitsch.
Your work features a much wider range of figurative motifs. What are the sources of your painting´s motifs?
In general I collect all kinds of visual material. I find images in magazines or use photos I took myself, mostly snapshots of certrain visual angles that interest me. I also take photos from the TV screen when in a film I get the impression that a situation comes to a head.
I collect those images by certain categories and file them in my own archive. Categories are for example human beings, animals, women, men, death, illness, hygenie, technology, sleep, horror and issues of daily politics.
The motifs and subjects of my paintings I later select from archive, by finding similarities or pairs for example. The two paintings I am working on at the moment are based on two different photos: one of a few children kneeling down and all togehter holding up with astonishment very carefully a huge snake, a boa constrictor. The other photograph shows a group of men in the jungle who hold a similar looking snake, but in a manner defeating it. This kind of comparison might make an interesting pair of paintings, let´s see.
Next to children, animals and botanics are frequent motifs in your paintings. In a work titeld "Mimikry" (2000) a armidillo with a military looking aircraft or spaceship in the background. At the border of this paintings are those green plants with big leaves. The type one knows from Henri Rousseau´s jungle panoramas. Does the picture point to a struggle between two different orders, the natural of Rousseau´s primeval paradise and modern civilisation?
The armadillo´s defense reaction to danger is to jump up to one meter high in the air to scare back its enemy. In this case the animals agressive move directed towards the aircraft of course misses. The reflex of the primeval animal is ridiculesly outdated. One could say that the painting centers around the complete failure of its protagionist in the course of evolution. I am interested in the idea of failure, which is what those pranks of the evolution or its phasing out modells like the armadillo, the tassmanic tiger or the duckbill might represent. They are phenomena from the margin that the diversity of species temporarily permits. Evolution and civilisation process seem to have shut their eyes to them for a while
I liked the Monstera or Philodendron a lot because it is a monsterplant. As parasit and weed it has an uncanny aspect to it. On the other hand the form of the Monstera is interesting to use as a pattern. Matisse has shown how a plant´s form can be used as patterned surface. I apply this strategy in some areas of my paintings.
Is your painting "Nackte Fische" (Naked Fish) 2002 really a romantic and slightly sentimental homage to the "world of painting"? It seems that whenever you refer to the tradition of painting the reference is problematized by image-layers that derive from another repertoire.
One idea is to play with the imaginary museum or image bank of the viewer, to slightly derange it. Or to leave a blank for the viewer`s own imagination. I therefore want may compositions to look provisional. "Nackte Fische" alludes on the one hand to Monets waterlilies, on the other hand the atmosphere is shifted a little bit towards an uncanny image of nature and of the narration. Certain dark colors are stressed. Some lighter spots are left out. The children are all alone, lost, maybe the situation is at the edge to a desaster. The story remains implizit but the painting definately suggests a doublesided atmosphere. I tried to get to a "Monet meets Stephen King" effect.
Other paintings of yours show no obvious reference to a painterly tradition. What truck me imediately were the very unusual points of view that the compositions suggest. The sometimes almost aggressive and always very direct adressing of the viewer reminds me of shaky handycam-filming in the 90ties where "realism" is connected to a camera-subjektive point of view.
I am very interested in stressing modes of perception. Also in the question of a personal subjektive perception which may differ completely from what one thinks one sees. Do you know the drwaing-experiment of the physicist Ernst Moch ("Die Selbstbeschauung Ich", 1886)? He lay down on a Canape and drew the whole sector of his perception. The result is a weird looking drawing with frayed edges. Something one would not recognize as somebodys own vision.
With certain points of view I try to draw the attention to minor, unusual, brief or paradox situations that might slip an attention focused on meaning or on narration. To make them a subject of painting supplies them with a new significance, enables a reevaluation of what we perceive.
With selecting different paintings to be shown together to process of reordering continues.