Johannes Girardoni: Organic Monochromes

by Florian Steininger

In 1921, Alexander Rodchenko created the monochrome triptych Pure Red Color; Pure Yellow Color; Pure Blue Color, thus reaching the first zero-point in the history of painting. “I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue, and yellow. I affirmed: it’s all over. Basic colors. Every plane is a plane and there is to be no representation.” This radicalism brought an end to Rodchenko’s practice of painting; he then switched to photography. These “last paintings” however, bear the roots of rich potential for subsequent generations of artists working with the monochrome. Here the concern is not only for the destruction of classical picture criteria, but also for the material reality of the work – for the faktura: “By continuing to work on colour, tones and shades in order to obtain the maximum of harmony or of discord, the pictorial medium, which together with composition constitutes the professional component of painting, has begun to evolve. Always painting the same places on the surface of the picture in order to obtain the maximum of those pictorial effects mentioned above has led to the emergence of a new element. This seems abstract when compared with the naturalistic effect, but it is, on the contrary, part of the true essence of painting: pictorial quality. Pictorial quality, in its primary sense, is nothing but mastery of the craft of painting. Impasto, paint preparation and glaze, taken together, represent the faktura of the picture’s surface. These are the elements of pictorial quality, and they have become increasingly important in a work. A new approach to painting has emerged, and the picture has ceased to be a picture, so as to become painting and object”.

Artists such as Strzeminski, Ryman, Marden, Umberg, and others, departed from Rodchenko’s material realism and created paintings with conceptual, analytic impetus at the margin of the zero-point.

Johannes Girardoni’s understanding of painting is rooted in the philosophy of the radical monochrome painting that came about with Rodchenko. However, Girardoni has brought his works into the third dimension. His works alternate between painting and sculpture. They are sensual, painterly objects. Using encaustic, the artist imbues his work with “corporeality” and detaches it from the flatness and smoothness of panel painting. Oil paint does not exist for its own sake in traditional representative painting; it is a means towards portrayal. For Rodchenko it is material, the faktura. For Girardoni, the mixture of liquid beeswax and pigment is the ideal material for creating haptic, corporeal qualities. Instead of a flatly painted plane, he uses the opaque texture of the organic material, somewhat reminiscent of skin: there is a shimmering from within. In doing so, Girardoni defines an interface between illusionism – (both “optical illusion,” such as found with Rothko and Pollock, and “sculptural illusion,” spanning from the window in classical painting since the invention of linear perspective to spectacular trompe-l’oeuil pictures) – and the “sober” monochrome flatness of minimalist work examples of Minimal Art.

Girardoni’s use of wax, influenced by Jasper John’s paintings with encaustic – such as Flag and Target – and related to Brice Marden’s use of the material in his opaque, monochrome pictures from the 1960s, ultimately led the artist to sculptural procedures: “Wax catalyzed the move away from ‘painting’… The beeswax allowed me to ‘build’ color.” Girardoni prefers using wooden slats, boards, or parts of wooden beams as construction material, where traces of their use have been recorded. To this the artist applies the material color - pigmented wax. Through their ready-made character the artist instills a uniqueness and reference to life in the objects. At first glance, the works, which are oriented towards geometric forms and series, seem like minimalist art in the succession of Carl Andre, Sol LeWit and Donald Judd. The major difference in Girardoni’s works, however, is that they have an organic and human atmosphere, while the cubes, fences and plates, due to their industrial production, emanate coolness. In Triptych – Titanium White, the external form reminds us of a winged altarpiece: as an object for spiritual devotion. Even though Girardoni leaves both the inner and outer panels abstract, he is nevertheless concerned with a contemplative experience, and not solely with a matter-of-fact inventory of color, material, and structure. Joseph Beuys had attributed beeswax a symbolic-spiritual function, that of warmth and energy. These may also be experienced in Girardoni’s objects, paired with painterly, coloristic, and tactile qualities.

Johannes Girardoni

Florian Steininger, Peter Lodermeyer

116 Pages

Edited by Feichtner Editions

Vienna, Austria 2007

ISBN#: 3-9502072-1-X