Lothar Götz’ work at SITEGALLERY – outside a site-specifi c wall painting, with the title 1952 tailored to the exterior façade, with inside a series of drawings in the gallery space - appearing as ser Lothar Götz’ work at SITE – outside a site-specifi c wall painting, tailored to the exterior façade, with inside a series of drawings in the gallery space - appearing as series of juxtaposed geometric abstract shapes of often intense colour - directly references ideas about architecture and space. Each drawing, delineated and rendered in pencil, represent a fl oor plan for an imaginary dwelling; whilst the exterior wall painting cues off the design of the building’s façade and its arrangement of elements such as balconies and windows. Despite using a superfi cially similar language of abstracted blocks of colour to the drawings, the wall painting, which occupies the plain rendered surround to the plate-glass window of the gallery - is not however an enlarged drawing. Götz describes it very much as a purely decorative piece. And whilst aesthetically it perhaps carries immediate echoes of graffi ti - that common fate of the stripped street level facades of urban modernism, (and it certainly shares with graffi ti the same intention to attract attention) - the model here is much more obvious and straightforward: the traditional shop window. Thus despite the boldness of the design – a kind of perverse camoufl age that looks like it has dropped an acid tab – Goetz sees it referencing the tiled surrounds of a butcher’s shop or fi shmonger’s, harking back to the traditional framing of the commercial high street window with its sometimes elaborate decoration, which both presents and celebrates the wares, goods or services of the shop inside. Here then the abstract blocks of colour can be read as directly referencing SITE as a contemporary art gallery and for the goods it contains: the drawings in the exhibition. These drawings form part of an ongoing series exploring spatial ideas for domestic spaces: apartments, houses, bungalows, villas. In contrast to his earlier drawings – which read as more self contained objects sitting in the space of the paper and are perhaps more obviously decipherable as building plans - these inhabit and structure the pieces of paper in a different way – fi lling it and stretching across, and off, the edge. This effect of the blurring of the separation between fi gure and ground is further exaggerated by the use of coloured paper as fi eld. Götz has often used colour in the past in his drawings to denote function in rooms. Here the coloured ground extends this highly tuned yet fl uid colour coding out to denote different situations or qualities of the surrounding landscapes of these dwellings – whether a schloss set in a meadow, or a bungalow overlooking the sea. Often even more specifi c geographical situations are denoted: a castle in a forest in Scotland, or a villa in a mountain landscape above a lake in Switzerland. These specifi cs can also extend to the identity of the owner of each property, and these are all imaginative factors that continually feed into the geometrical arrangement of forms and the colour decisions for each drawing. Götz says simply of his use of colour: ‘It is very important in my work. Colour is beautiful: a key aspect of life that surrounds us all the time. I just love co lour.’ He sees his work as very much in line with a traditionally classical idea of art as active fantasy - something practiced as part of a personal strategy to escape from reality: the buildings in these drawings in habit a world of their own. Thus whilst Götz references architecture in his work, he sees his as an opposite process to that of architectural design, which in general looks to move a fantasy towards reality - concretizing ideas and designs as built form. In this Götz draws the comparison with another passion of his – also connected to his love of colour - gardening and fl owers. He describes how the creation of a garden is like the process of architecture: that despite the common idea of a garden as a kind of paradise dream space, the attempt at its realization and perfection can only be in the actual. Although, as he adds‘...it is only perhaps when one fl ower is taken out of context of the garden and isolated inside in a vase, that it can almost become unreal again - like an image of a fl ower.’ This provides a key metaphor for understanding Götz’ work and different strands of practice. He has often referred to his intentions in site specifi c wall paintings – such as the work Forever Young at the Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2002 - as being to create an experience like that of being in a garden. In the same way, his description above of the removal of a single fl ower to a vase - returning it to being in some part an object of contemplation and fantasy – can perhaps be seen as a way to understand his drawings in the gallery space. This continuing dialogue between individual framed works and site-specifi c wall-based projects, can be seen developing in much of his recent practice, most notably in the Idylle exhibition, curated by Oli Zybok, which is currently touring, and to which Götz is contributing both site-specifi c wall paintings and drawings at different venues. Signifi cant also in this respect is a current collaboration with the architects Caruso St John on the colour concept for the renovation of main Headquarters’ building of the Arts Council England in London. Here single isolated walls and rooms of colour are designed to create a sense of a dispersed experiential discourse for those occupying and using the building. But in this exhibition at SITE, in the direct experiential juxtaposition of the exterior wall painting and the drawings in the gallery - this dialogue has perhaps reached a new pitch of intensity. Rob Wilson |
