Lothar Götz at David Risley / Copenhagen

LOTHAR GÖTZ
BACKSTAGE

19.01.2018 – 10.03.2018

DAVID RISLEY GALLERY
BISPEVEJ 29
2400 COPENHAGEN
DENMARK

Images courtesy the artist and David Risley gallery
Photo credit: Jan Søndergaard
I have no
interest in people, says Lothar Götz. What he really means is he has no
interest in making images of people. In reality his work is generous and
humanist. He says it is incomplete without people, they are vital to its
reading and success. The work is for and about people, their understanding of
and place within space, architecture. His work highlights and exemplifies
a very current problem. It is not for screens. Sections of it provide colourful
backdrops to the constant stream of selfies but they give no idea of the
physical experience of being with his work. Photographs of the work reduce it
to a picture. It maps and unfolds space. It colours the air around it and
reflects and absorbs the light in the room.

The work here, his largest wall painting to date is 42m (138′)
long and 5m (16′) high. It wraps around a large T-shape section of wall
which divides the gallery into 3 spaces. These walls are a permanent part of
the gallery. They partition the large open warehouse type space into two
gallery spaces and a long corridor. Götz makes the walls the work. They become
a large, freestanding sculptural lump within the space. Through his colouring
of the wall these walls boom ‘in’ the space, not ‘of’ the space. The painting
is never visible all at once, the viewer needs to circumnavigate the whole
space of the gallery to see the full work. Each space has a different
character. The work is superficially fast at first glance, huge graphic areas
of rich colours which meet with the sharpest of edges along parallel diagonal
lines. They amplify the architecture of the space and add a dramatic direction,
movement. It is unreproducible. The same colours re-occur throughout the
spaces but appear to be different in the varying combinations, encouraging the
viewer to re-explore the spaces and refer back to colours already encountered.
The work demands a visit, commitment, time, prolonged viewing. The work is
generous and rewards the time spent with it.