Frank Bauer | FISCHGRÄTPARKETT UND ANDERE PROBLEME

In the organizer's words:

Frank Bauer was inspired to create his latest works by David Hockney's famous painting "Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy". He was fascinated by the tension between the naturalistic depiction and the highly artificial staging of the painting. He was particularly interested in the static arrangement of the figures, which contrasts with a fleeting snapshot. This awakened in him the desire to create similar double portraits.

Unlike his earlier works, which were mostly based on unplanned, spontaneous photographs, Bauer changed his approach this time. The templates for his new pictures were created in long photo sessions in which the people portrayed actively participated in the process. They helped choose the final motif and decided how much the picture should say about themselves. Some included personal objects in the portrait, while others did without such details. In these sessions, the artist consciously saw himself as a neutral observer who left it up to the people to portray themselves. He refrained from imposing a preconceived pictorial composition on his subjects. A central aim was to avoid the impression of a snapshot in order to create a connection to classic portraits. At the same time, Frank Bauer played with the formal elements of Hockney's work wherever possible - for example, by positioning the figures in front of a window.

The significance of portraits has changed considerably over time. Today, countless portraits are taken with cell phones and immediately shared online. But when Frank Bauer digitized his grandmother's old photo albums, he noticed the big difference to the photography of earlier times. Back then, photographs were carefully staged, posed and sometimes stiff, but they laid claim to permanence. A painted portrait, according to Bauer, carries this claim even more strongly - even if the template was only a simple cell phone photo.

Whether painted portraits are still contemporary today remains an open question for him. In a discussion at the time, Gerhard Richter replied: "People always paint." In this sense, he sees each of his portraits as an examination of the question of what painting can mean today.