| UPDATE “EVERLASTING BEAUTY” To understand Janos Schaab’s paintings, the viewer has to be willing to really look. At a first glance, his paintings appear simply structured. Only by looking and by understanding the interplay between spatial distance and closeness is it possible to unfold their true meaning and deep expressiveness.
His work shows icons – beauty icons from society such as Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly and prominent artists such as Andy Warhol. For his portraits, Janos Schaab picks out a detail of a celebrity snap-shot, which conjures up in the viewer’s mind memories of images presented by the media. Looking at the portraits, the stored information begins to interact with what the viewer sees. The result: The viewer associates certain traits to the portrayed - such as lust for life, pleasure, good upbringing and fine manners as well as longing and melancholy. These traits even apply after their deaths. They become icons. This impressive effect of Schaab’s paintings has to do with how these traits are conveyed and the technique the artist uses. Just as the viewer’s knowledge of the celebrities blends together with what is seen to become the icons Audrey, Marlene or Grace, so too do the painted halftone dots - some black, others coloured – blend together. The further the viewer moves away from the painting, the clearer the picture gets: the individual dots merge together - yet another example of how the brain and visual perception work together. That is what makes Schaab’s paintings so special, so outstanding. “Less is more”, as he likes to put it himself. Through his art, the iconographic traits of the portrayed are captured in an extremely aesthetic, concise and - at the same time - reduced way. The title of the work “paparazzi_01” refers to the hunt for icons: the desire to make celebrities visible for all. The press and the media are part of the icon. Just as the press needs celebrities, so too do celebrities need the press. For the Pop Artists of the sixties there were no taboos – this also applies to the paparazzi. It is of absolutely no consequence to whom the legs depicted belong. They are merely a detail - heightening our awareness for voyeurism and letting us have a peek at what we desire. A global process of perception, based on the same mechanisms as described above, can be found in other paintings. In the painting “ground_zero_01”, the brand Coca Cola acts as a symbol, allegorically standing for the USA. A trailer with the Coca Cola trademark, recognisable around the world, stands in front of one of the collapsed World Trade Center towers. Because of our collective memories of media images, we immediately know what we are looking at. We know what happened to the skyscrapers. We know what this dramatic event meant for the US as well as for others. Janos Schaab: “Instead of Coke, it could just as well have been an American flag.” This illustrates how influential advertising and marketing is. What the Pop Artists back in the sixties put up for discussion still applies today: popular culture is an inalienable element of our world, of our daily experiences – even when we don’t consciously realize it. Consumerism remains existent as a constant factor. Pop Art still has its validity, but with an update. New elements are added to enrich it. Era and message distinguish Schaab from the original Pop Artists. There are also inherent shadows in ambivalent beauty. This is the intent of “shadow_01”, a reaction to the events of 9/11. The scene of the picture cannot be clearly identified. An arbitrary street situation, a year and a half after ground zero, is shown. The artist observes, implying intermediate shades and nuances, neither happy nor political. The process of recognition – also in the figurative sense – makes the viewer look. Via this process, the viewer is put under a spell by the painting. The further he or she moves away from the picture, the clearer it will become in his or her memory - and will stimulate the recognition process anew. This takes place again and again and again ... The pictures work very subtly and amazingly precisely. Janos Schaab’s love for architecture, for Bauhaus and for photography is the key to understanding his work. The architecture of visual perception, when translated into his paintings, leads to a piece of art with photographic qualities - and vice versa. The painting, the visual process and, lastly, the painter’s passion correlate with each other. The further one moves away from the picture, the more the pictorial impression mutates into a photograph. The closer one moves back to it again, the clearer the architectural structure of the painting becomes. There is nothing heavy about his paintings. On the contrary: there is an air of lightness about them – just like in modern architecture. Dr. Christel Wagner-Niedner back ... |
