【Taipei·DunRen】Beyond Light- Hans Kotter Solo Show 3.20 -5.16

Peter Lodermeyer

藝術般的人造光
近觀 Hans Kotter 的作品

Peter Lodermeyer

A hotel in Germany, not far from the River Rhine. I inquire at the desk if it might be possible to look at the work by Hans Kotter that I had read about being here. The receptionist, obviously clueless to what I am talking about, gives me vague directions to one of the upper floors. I go up and down the halls for a long time, searching to no avail, until I discover in a roomy niche three large, elegantly-proportioned objects on the wood-paneled wall. In the dim light I am unable to recognize much of what is on the front surfaces. I notice a light switch and turn it on, not suspecting it has anything to do with this object. There is a short flickering within the three upright rectangular boxes – and suddenly a veritable miracle of light takes place. Across nine square meters of surface a cascade of colour forms lights up in bright cobalt blue, yellow, and bottle green, undulating in slanted waves across one other. To the right the colour culminates in a magnificent cognac-coloured glow. The light-flooded forms remain inexplicable, like in an abstract painting, and at the same time oddly real, material, photographically precise. They seem organically animated – and yet their colours are so cool, their appearance so smooth, that they maintain an air of something confusingly foreign and inapproachable.

Confronted out of the blue with Hans Kotter’s photographic works, oscillating between abstraction and materiality, naturalness and artificiality, technical perfection and painterly appearance, a person will inevitably question whether or not these are phenomena that have been digitally produced or altered. The truth of the matter is that the artist takes his camera, zooming in on drops of oil or glass prisms he has built himself in order to observe there the confusingly complicated play of the refraction, diffraction, and reflection of light. Through skillful lighting from various sources, forms of strange beauty and splendid colour quality emerge in the interior of these transparent media. During this process, transitions that are difficult to identify even though they result from light-flooded matter, colourful backgrounds and reflecting surfaces, create phenomena which evoke corporeal impressions, but do not materialize to any comprehensible shape. Thus, pseudo-organic formations come about that seem like paradox plants or landscapes made of fluids, and yet remain at the same time, immaterial, energetic, and indefinable in their innermost. These forms, which Kotter then exhibits as laser-chrome prints or slides in light boxes, are not subsequently altered digitally; on the contrary, they are presented in the way they revealed themselves to his camera.

Kotter’s theme is light. His works always address light, tracing its most-unexpected effects. In doing so, the diversity of the light phenomena allows the artist to break fresh ground in finding highly varied possibilities of expression and ever-new techniques, materials, and manners of presentation, which extend beyond the customary boundaries of the genre. Hans Kotter not only constructs light boxes, he also builds objects, pours things he has found into transparent resins, marks entire rooms with paths of light made of luminescent foils, and, using his camera, approaches the most subtle phenomena of light. In conversation he refers to his photographic works as “painting with light”, pointing out that he only discovered photography as an aid after much experimentation and mostly by chance. Kotter is not primarily a photographer, but an artist of light. As such, he is also necessarily an artist of space, since space reveals itself to us visually as a void that contains light. Not only his room installations, but also his light boxes lit with neon tubes reveal a presence that has a considerable effect on the room, and in fact, changes it. For this reason, it comes as no surprise that he repeatedly receives commissions for large-format installations in public spaces and office buildings.

It is highly interesting that a connection has been made between these light boxes and the windows of gothic cathedrals. What is diaphanous, i.e. the penetration of light through transparent matter, as well as the flooding of light into a room were often considered by art historians as an expression of the medieval metaphysics of light. The magic of the diaphanous certainly also occupies Hans Kotter in his photographic experiments, but it should not be overlooked that the artist is also aware of the fact that today our relationship to light is deeply profane. In his forays into the microcosm of optics he does not succumb to the abstract beauty of the light effects he has observed. He is too much the critical contemporary for this, acutely aware that the notions of light anchored in western thought as symbols of the divine, of truth and of reason have long since been subjected to a far-reaching secularization and finally, a drastic trivialization. One of the preconditions of the western metaphysics of light was no doubt, for the most part, the unavailability of the sun as it sought its natural course through the day and year. With electricity light became a constantly available, producible, and manageable quantity. For all of us artificial light has become a self-evident prerequisite of our modern everyday life. At night, thanks to the glow of neon advertisements, the headlights of cars, and streetlights, even the ugliest city can share in the profane magic of artificial light. At the latest with Dan Flavin’s installations of fluorescent tubes in the 1960s, artificial lighting had become at once the theme and the “material” of a new artistic genre, the art of light.

Kotter 的裝置與燈箱之中，充滿光的形式與鏡面平滑的物件，看起來總是「閃閃發光地乾淨與純粹」，正如 1999 年那自嘲式的展覽名稱所暗示的那樣。這聽起來像是廣告詞的座右銘，提醒著我們意識到，西方的光形上學今日已落入產品設計、廣告商、以及他們口中令人質疑的幸福承諾之中。我們對於廣告之中那種陽光總是耀眼地照著，使每塊磚、每片金屬、與每個漆面都閃爍光芒，像無暇的牙齒呈現潔淨純白的完美狀態、而金屬鍍漆的豪華驕車在圖片中像其他星球來的生物那樣，以安靜且極為純粹完美的方式呈現。Hans Kotter 的作品有意識地自己置於誘人的，或幾乎可以說是挑逗般的視線之中，以接近消費性產品那般地呈現著完美且無菌的美學。Kotter 使用燈箱的方式，是在藝術範疇之外的我們所熟知的，尤其是我們在百貨公司或精品店中常見的廣告方式。在「The Very Best…」裝置作品中，他製造了桌球檯與球會獎盃這種體育界常見的用品，以冷淡的閃爍光芒強調其材質。透過他對光線的使用，以誇張的平滑設計帶出一種抽離感，借此強調物件的諷刺感，使物件轉變為「酷」的標記而不帶有實用價值。 從乒乓球桌中可以感覺到美學已轉變成一種戀物感，呈現著從下方照亮且透明的形式，卻無法實際用來打球。雖然尺寸的設計與正規競賽所使用的大小精準對應，但是檯面上含有油水混合物，會使球一上桌便被黏住。然而，無用是否為美的代價？Kotter 在他的作品中測試了藝術與設計、以及美感與功能性之間的狹窄界限。同樣的，他那懸吊或者傾靠牆上的燈箱，也同樣交替於極簡雕塑與時尚設計之間。然而，一旦有人打開隱藏於內部的螢光燈管，這些裝置便轉化為魔術燈籠，從光之仙境之中顯現縈繞人心的圖像。Kotter 的作品是對光產生無盡迷戀的練習曲。

Artificial Light as Art.

Approaching the Works of Hans Kotter

by Peter Lodermeyer

A hotel in Germany, not far from the River Rhine. I inquire at the desk if it might be possible to look at the work by Hans Kotter that I had read about being here. The receptionist, obviously clueless to what I am talking about, gives me vague directions to one of the upper floors. I go up and down the halls for a long time, searching to no avail, until I discover in a roomy niche three large, elegantly-proportioned objects on the wood-paneled wall. In the dim light I am unable to recognize much of what is on the front surfaces. I notice a light switch and turn it on, not suspecting it has anything to do with this object. There is a short flickering within the three upright rectangular boxes – and suddenly a veritable miracle of light takes place. Across nine square meters of surface a cascade of colour forms lights up

in bright cobalt blue, yellow, and bottle green, undulating in slanted waves across one other. To the right the colour culminates in a magnificent cognac-coloured glow. The light-flooded forms remain inexplicable, like in an abstract painting, and at the same time oddly real, material, photographically precise. They seem organically animated – and yet their colours are so cool, their appearance so smooth, that they maintain an air of something confusingly foreign and inapproachable.

Confronted out of the blue with Hans Kotter’s photographic works, oscillating between abstraction and materiality, naturalness and artificiality, technical perfection and painterly appearance, a person will inevitably question whether or not these are phenomena that have been digitally produced or altered. The truth of the matter is that the artist takes his camera, zooming in on drops of oil or glass prisms he has built himself in order to observe there the confusingly complicated play of the refraction, diffraction, and reflection of light. Through skillful lighting from various sources, forms of strange beauty and splendid colour quality emerge in the interior of these transparent media. During this process, transitions that are difficult to identify even though they result from light-flooded matter, colourful

backgrounds and reflecting surfaces, create phenomena which evoke corporeal impressions, but do not materialize to any comprehensible shape. Thus, pseudo-organic formations come about that seem like paradox plants or landscapes made of fluids, and yet remain at the same time, immaterial, energetic, and indefinable in their innermost. These forms, which Kotter then exhibits as laser-chrome prints or slides in light boxes, are not subsequently altered digitally; on the contrary, they are presented in the way they revealed themselves to his camera.

Kotter’s theme is light. His works always address light, tracing its most-unexpected effects. In doing so, the diversity of the light phenomena allows the artist to break fresh ground in finding highly varied possibilities of expression and ever-new techniques, materials, and manners of presentation, which extend beyond the customary boundaries of the genre. Hans Kotter not only constructs light boxes, he also builds objects, pours things he has found into transparent resins, marks entire rooms with paths of light made of luminescent foils, and, using his camera, approaches the most subtle phenomena of light. In conversation he refers to his photographic works as “painting with light”, pointing out that he only discovered photography as an aid after much experimentation and mostly by chance. Kotter is not primarily a photographer, but an artist of light. As such, he is also necessarily an artist of space, since space reveals itself to us visually as a void that contains light. Not only his room installations, but also his light boxes lit with neon tubes reveal a presence that has a considerable effect on the room, and in fact, changes it. For this reason, it comes as no surprise that he repeatedly receives commissions for large-format installations in public spaces and office buildings.

It is highly interesting that a connection has been made between these light boxes and the windows of gothic cathedrals. What is diaphanous, i.e. the penetration of light through transparent matter, as well as the flooding of light into a room were often considered by art historians as an expression of the medieval metaphysics of light. The magic of the diaphanous certainly also occupies Hans Kotter in his photographic experiments, but it should not be overlooked that the artist is also aware of the fact that today our relationship to light is deeply profane. In his forays into the microcosm of optics he does not succumb to the abstract beauty of the light effects he has observed. He is too much the critical contemporary for this, acutely aware that the notions of light anchored in western thought as symbols of the divine, of truth and of reason have long since been subjected to a far-reaching secularization and finally, a drastic trivialization. One of the preconditions of the western metaphysics of light was no doubt, for the most part, the unavailability of the sun as it sought its natural course through the day and year. With electricity light became a constantly available, producible, and manageable quantity. For all of us artificial light has become a self-evident prerequisite of our modern everyday life. At night, thanks to the glow of neon advertisements, the headlights of cars, and streetlights, even the ugliest city can share in the profane magic of artificial light. At the latest with Dan Flavin’s installations of fluorescent tubes in the 1960s, artificial lighting had become at once the theme and the “material” of a new artistic genre, the art of light.

In Kotter’s installations and light boxes, the forms and mirror-smooth objects flooded with light always seem “sparkling clean and pure”, as the self-ironic title of an exhibition of 1999 suggested. This motto that sounds like some kind of advertising can serve as a reminder that the western metaphysics of light has fallen today into the hands of product designers and advertising agents with their questionable promises of happiness. All of us are familiar with ads where the sun always shines and each tile, each chrome and paint surface gleams, where cavity-free teeth sparkle in their hygienically perfect condition, and metallically-painted limousines shoot across the pictures like beings from other spheres, silent and in utterly pure perfection. Hans Kotter’s works consciously place themselves optically in seductive, almost flirtatious, proximity to the aesthetics of the consumer products that are perfect and sterile alike. Light boxes, the way Kotter uses them, are known to us outside the context of art, above all as an advertising means used in department stores and fashion boutiques. And in his installation “The very Best …” he makes everyday objects from the sports world, a table-tennis table, and club trophies, gleam in a cold splendor that emphasizes the material. By exaggerating the sleek design, imbuing it with an alienating effect through his use of light, the objects are enhanced ironically, mutated to become “cool” signs of themselves with no utilitarian value. A turning of aesthetics into fetishes may be sensed in the table-tennis table, transparent and lit from below, but not usable for playing. Although its measurements correspond precisely to the measurements required in tournaments, the tabletop contains a water-and-oil-mixture that would make a real table-tennis ball stick upon contact. Is uselessness a price one pays for beauty? In his works Kotter tests the borders of the narrow line between art and design, between beauty and functionality. Likewise, his light boxes, hung on or leaned against the wall, alternate between the status of minimalist sculpture and chic design object. But as soon as one activates their fluorescent tubes hidden in their interiors they become magic lanterns that reveal haunting pictures from the wonderland of light. Kotter’s works are etudes of the inexhaustible fascination with light.