BRICOLAGE
NATURAL PATTERNS, STRUCTURES, IMPRINT OF NATURE
One pattern alone has no meaning. Only in connection with other patterns, an exact picture is created. It depends on the arrangement of the patterns. As the arrangement changes, perception and content change too - not only in the arts.
EXAMPLE:
same patterns for 2 different wall installations:
single parts of the wall installation "ATLAS"
single parts of the wall installation "SCYLLA UND CHARYBDIS"
The condition for the production of these samples is the cooperation of the sense of touch, mental imagination and coincidence.The material is processed with the fingertips without the usual painting utensils. The organisation of the material determines the representation.
In this way subsequently composed pictures or a picture-complex is the visible trace of an activity.
Historical note: patterns and structures from nature are the basis for many important works of art, they permeate our entire cultural history. Beginning with the cave paintings of the Stone Age (irregularities of the rock surface were cleverly used for animal and hunting scenes) over Leonardo da Vinci (The allegory of the mottled wall), numerous examples of the baroque dutch landscape painting, to Max Ernst (Frottage - "Histoire Naturelle") etc...
The nature - like patterns, which I produce by folding and unfolding the primed thin sheets of paper or other materials while simultaneously applying paint are based on the following observations:
In the real world patterns are created spontaneously as a result of chemical and physical reactions that never repeat themselves. They combine to form an overall network structure. This self-organization of the patterns in nature is the language of nature. Small samples organize themselves to the big landscape. In the little limestone the optical structure of the big limestone mountains is already included. One talks about self similarity. The difference only consists in the differential relationship of the circumstances. The atmospheres of surroundings arise because structured patterns behave in certain relations to each other.
IMPRINT OF NATURE
To create an imprint and close representation of nature, thin sheets of paper or other materials are pressed onto a structured surface while
simultaneously applying paint. Afterwards the thin foil is flattened out to achieve a realistic image.
Since I often use the natural imprint in my work, here are some remarks regarding this archaic technique. It is the oldest technique of
reproduction of mankind. Nature imprints has always existed: for cultic, artistic or practical purposes. Between the first known uses in the applications in the stone-age cave paintings and those
of modern forensic methods are 30000 years.
Best known is the epigraphic drawing, colloquial rather pejoratively called "poor imitation". The technique has been widely used in the early
archeology for preservation and presentation of relieffs and inscriptions. Artists in different cultural epochs used the characteristics and possibilities of the nature imprint and included into
their works (in the painting hardly as imprint recognizably).
As an example here I made some nature imprints from a coincidental excavation find from my garden in Rome. By it one can recognize that
the nature imprint is a guided random product with different manifestations, however apart from its aesthetics it can supply also most precise informations about the condition of a
surface.
Leonardo da Vinci
Imprint of nature: a sage leaf with handwritten notes about this technique.
Chapter IX616 of the Codex Atlanticus (ca. 1505)