(...)

Our eyes are wide open in our contemporary awareness of life. They let in every one of the countless images that are constantly available from all directions. Scanners for the image of the world, instruments that are permanently set to receive. But if all they do is merely register, then our curiosity tends to diminish. The pos-sible ways of creating images, of conveying and recording them, have been greatly extended and accelerated, but not much headway has yet been made in terms of the symbolic process, the ability and will to give meaning to visual data.

And the paintings from Corinne Wasmuht are also part of the flo-od of visual information. But this flood is not accepted as a mere fact, where all that is needed is to learn how to allow oneself to be swept along by it skilfully. When certain subjects are involved the contrary is the case, and then the material is tested for complexity and possible meaning, using processes that are constantly renewed. And so we are not recording a stream of images, but acquiring our own image cosmos. But that is done by using the resources of painting, the resources of a traditional, disciplined way of painting that comes from a quite different time and that seems to be obsolete. A contemporary experience of life, determined by advanced technology is - in a way that seems paradoxical at first - processed by an instru-ment that is essentially anachronistic. This is not an attempt to tilt against windmills, in other words trying to force back the enor-mous number and speed of media images, but to analyse from a con-sciously chosen distance. Painting slows the images down and endows them with body. It demands closeness and sensuality, and makes it possible to stand back and take stock. It does not rely on the mere effect of the given images, but recreates them. And because the image alone is not an analysis, because producing a painting in a way that is still structured by drawing does not guarantee insight, the var-ious forms of montage become all the more important. The interfaces between the individual elements, the apparently innocent and meaning-less patterns that Corinne Wasmuht's images construct, are the actual centre of force. This is not just a demonstration of the analytical capability of painting as a historical instrument. Here too the closeness to the organizational structure of technical image pro-duction and processing become visible. And this is where the pulse of the images beats, its rhythm related to that of contemporary music; this does not means machanics and an abdication of personality, in-sight and communication, but recreating a workable basis for seeing the world under changed circumstances. The 11doors of perception" always open differently.

from:Julian Heynen, Augen-Puls, in: Wasmuht-Gerwers-Skreber, ars viva 96/97 Malerei, pub. by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V., Cologne 1996, pp. 9-11..

Photo:
'Spiegelraum II', 1997
Öl auf Holz
219 x 157 cm
Detail