Christian Wulle Kurhaus Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1997 Introduction Prof. Eugen Gomringer Ladies and Gentlemen! The constructive concrete art which is in the center of today‘s exhibition of Christian Wulle, has to be related actually to our century in historically form, however, it is stationary simultaneously staying over the times which has stimulated as Socrates to a beautiful statement which is often quoted, as also Goethe in Wilhelm Meister, both to appropriate characterizations. It isn‘t meant exactly in the latter of two cases the art of the young Christian Wulle, but the old art direction to which he has found access. It is the way of art, which gets by without illustrations, without literature and wants to come onto the point directly namely on weighing up from strengths in forms and colors, on a searching and a testing of harmony, on giving and taking away in the sensory perception process, - and these as said, direct with the known means of any picture design, so there are point, line, area and color, rhythm and proportion, goes to work. As an historical art, this means as an art which has learned its clear formulations in our century, it has already influenced all of us very much, whether conscious or unconscious, it is really contemporary to everyday life, if we have well arranged things around us. This constructive concrete art is called that way because it is a concrete reality of its own, however, has already gone through something itself also. It got already once in a while reputed to be dead, too; however this only of the shortsighted, which overview the art only from year to year, and don‘t want to know anything about a further-reaching responsibility of processes of art-creating. Christian Wulles art is a new case in a convinced attitude on the background of these only just short described characteristics. It does confirm not only that this art, like an old wisdom, is always existing but also must be discovered. It also confirms that it gets alive at any time - one only must search freely and openly into oneself. It can be even an honest, great help how I have experienced this in my different teachings with students once in a while. A help, when an orientation is looked for, or when an orientation is necessary. Art cannot be only a strong help in such cases generally, it can be a right way-preparation in the case of the constructive concrete art, - so how lines of the art can be also lines of inner life. Lines to which one can trust, to which one can keep to. Lines one just believes in. It has to be said without beating about the bush that Christian Wulle has gone so approximately this way, that means, that he has found his diagonals for a quite certain reason, yes, invented for himself. Here we have arrived at an important point. A famous artist, the already years ago deceased Swiss Richard Paul Lohse, once has told in a life summary, how he was shocked when he has meant to have introduced himself the diagonal, the sloping line, in the context of the constructive art as the first, and must state that others had it anticipated already. Then there was a need of a reorientation of the thought world. This artist, Lohse, then has let left the fingers of the diagonals and forced himself a big way with other means. However, Christian Wulle isn‘t simply an imitator who forms with the sloping trains now once, if he works with this means, too. One must call upon now every observer to take care of the design question in the art of Wulle. The same forms aren‘t always based on the same intentions and the same motivations. Wulle undoubtedly had been influenced in his academic years, this means he has examined the articulations seeming reasonable for it. However, he has preoccupied in different written remarks of which I only can hope that at some time they will be included in suitable form in people pressing the state of knowledge about the art in their significance for man and particularly for those looking for knowledge. A central concern to him is the engagement in proportion. He found: „There wasn‘t such an insignificant degree of a proportional valency in any cultural epoch (within the last centuries) like in our today‘s one“. It meets - that I was in a film about the great German architect Mies van der Rohe, the builder of the German pavilion at the world exhibition in Barcelona 1928, the national gallery‘s Berlin and of course unifier of the most beautiful Skyscraper in Chicago and New York in a seminar recently, he could point with this film at the succinct observation of Mies van der Rohe that nothing else is left of each building as the proportion if of course a such is existent at all. This means that, again and again, one returns after many considerations and experiences to the old laws which are to be discovered in the nature as in the art, often agreeing themselves. So Christian Wulle, too. However, Wulle has another motivation, this is the music and in particular that from Miles Davis. He wrote in 1992: „ I came to the jazz music about my preference for rock music and jazz-rock. I heard the album „Bitches Brew“ of Miles Davis in the year 1985 and it fascinated me in such a way that a number of drawings followed under the influence of this atmosphere. Supported by the permanent interchange with my art-professor Jürgen Reipka about painting and jazz in various ways, the idea to work out pictures to the music of Miles even already arose years ago.“ This therefore is the other, immediate subject, the gripping, the emotional. The result is - we can recognize it now so approximately, - a product from feeling the music and the strict consciousness of the importance of the proportion. This is a good breeding ground of the art, primarily the constuctive art which was found a prerequisite from the beginning. Kandinsky already, who is regarded as one of the fathers of the concrete art, ( thanks for his document of 1910 „ About the Spirituality in the Art" ) talks about the music and tries to manage with the new, old design elements point, line and area nothing else than a canon as the music always had it in the general bass. Also Goethe has missed the being absent of such in the painting as a heavy defect. Fine arts and music have become near relatives in the area of the constructive concrete as visual music, though also naturally visual bases are others than auditatives. The emotional share, the immediate putting into action become visible as well as in each artistic efforts of Christian Wulle from having an effect on the hearing the frequency ranges on colors and forms. Aright such pictures have already been compared with scores. Be included, that a fundamental distinction has to be there decided at the same slant position of the trains of 45°, whether either the color trains are subdivided or put together interrupting the flow from the individual rectangles or whether the color trains are lined in one piece. This distinction will not only us, also it will employ the artist because there is substance in it for further decisions. We take the throughout whole colored trains rising from the left below to the right above - so to speak the positive, optimistic principle in their dynamics - as the most mature expression in the the till now achievements, the wooden and enlighted objects earn a special interest. They are consisting of four squared timber sticks which are painted all around in the same color and are so placed over a uniform background that they are forming a flat surface despite dissimilar cross sections and thickness. An additional effect arises from the all around painting by exchanging the colors of the sticks themselves at the side according to the interaction of colors. A kinetic effect is unavoidable for the passer-by. In 1992 Christian Wulle has written in a text of a catalog dedicated to Miles Davis: „Miles took the music seriously and I try to feel, to think and to act similarly in my job. Apart from his rich life‘s work in quality and quantity of the recently deceased Miles Davis, impressed still quite deeply his conscious renunciation of superfluous or the usual kindnesses to the audience, to the press and the world at all ...“. Ladies and gentlemen, we are bearing with this open statement gladly, we should bear it, because it serves a thoroughly honest attitude and the concentration on a work, which it has already run through the different stadia, in the search after oneself and with the world that we live in, can be felt. Those words and those exhibitions which let get insubstantial all toad reputations of an end of this art . Hermann Hesse once has written to me when I was in a similar situation as Christian Wulle: „There something lives further, coming perhaps from a far long way.“ I can set this word also above the work of Christian Wulle. But enough with the verbal liabilities -- at last we see in front of us the 45° rising color trains, the rhythmical game of the spaces between the objects, the color changes, the tensions and diversions, the free and bound energies, the proportions. Only our reactions to these specifications are counting in the end. [Eugen Gomringer, 1-26-1997] Back