PSYCHE UND LANDSCHAFT

Carsten Fock
March 27 – June 1, 2024

Psyche and Landscape

“Stop making beautiful paintings,” Carsten Fock was once told by one of his teachers. More than twenty years later, it seems that he has taken this advice seriously, though not by simply accepting it. He questioned it, to find out if and how beauty can have a place in paintings without their losing strength or credibility.

In Psyche und Landschaft, his first exhibition at Zeller Van Almsick, the German artist presents works in which beauty is accompanied by something else. The artist is aware that an attractive color palette, especially when adorning an abstract vocabulary, may develop into too much of a good thing. Yet, he still takes the risk of approaching it, even with the danger of crossing the line. We see clouds of color, marks applied with the fingers, which could very well have been inspired by an impressive sky. But there is not just awe, there are also other tones; the clouds are not merely serene or pleasantly passing by. They  are dark or threatening; in some cases the air becomes thick, as if lacking oxygen. The marks are moody like the weather – they can, in fact, convey any kind of expression.

 Painting is an act of balance. Not just in terms of how pretty or soothing the effects of certain color combinations can be, but also in terms of density and what the marks of color invoke. In their abstraction, the works allude to psychic states, be it gloomy or excited, overwhelmed or contemplative. Yet they also derive from the observation of nature, from the desire to catch something experienced outside. Rather than solely being expressive works, in which the author comes to the forefront, the works also seem to align with the lineage of (post-)impressionism, where the artist acts more as an observer, seeing how light breaks and colors change. Expression balances perception. Thus, the paintings become a place of encounter, where the subjectivity of the maker meets with the objectivity of what is around – a mind merging into landscape.

Knowing that Fock shares his time between the German city of Bamberg and the countryside in Denmark, close to the sea, it seems probable that the paintings originate in nature. In some of the larger works, a (tilted) horizontal in the lower part of the canvas confirms a land- or seascape orientation. Yet there are also works where the clouds seem to be the result of a violent explosion, or pollution created by a fire. Such references are never confirmed; the cause of the clouds remains hidden.  Additionally, art from the past has informed the work. Fock considers Claude Monet and Gustave Moreau important influences, painters whose work does not come from drawing, but from color blotches creating attention and atmosphere. But they are just two among many artists that could be mentioned. Further back, Caspar David Friedrich and William Turner are possible references when it comes to the impact nature has on an individual. “I have shelves of books inside me,” the artist has remarked, which does not necessarily mean that he was thinking about these specific painters when working on the current show. It is more likely that he was contemplating the sea, clouds, light, and vast, open space prior to creating this work. Or, maybe he was looking for a place where thinking stops and just becomes looking and being.

The teacher that warned him not to make beautiful paintings was Per Kirkeby, also a painter who was inspired by the Danish landscape, and who needed to have nature around him in order to paint. Kirkeby, a geologist turned painter, connected through his paintings to the earth and its layers. In comparison, Fock is a painter who directs our gaze upwards, to the skies; his temperament is more ethereal. Perhaps Fock’s goal is to paint the vast nothingness, a space without borders, up to the heavens, like what you experience standing in front of the sea. In that case, his interest is something you cannot really see. Yet you need some architecture for a painting, he has noted. No matter how impressed or enchanted you are by a motif, you need something rational, a frame of thought, to set out and make a work. That something can be what retains the beauty, what keeps the balance. Thus Fock offers a kind of abstraction that only slightly flirts with figuration. The paintings do not strive to depict anything too specific. They show almost-landscapes, just as they present beauty as part of a more complex field of forces. 

--Jurriaan Benschop