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The following
text from Manfred Geissler was found as a typewritten manuscript in the
estate. It was probably written for the exhibition “Zwischen oben als
unten” (Between Above as Beneath) in the Tina Farina Gallery, Cologne,
1988. The passages highlighted by the author in quotation marks come from
conversations with Lips. The editorial work was done by Angelika Wichert,
Berlin.
Manfred Geissler
Why Pictures are Made or About the Origination of Pictures
Words are thoughts, coming close to something, stage props from pictures,
just as pictures are stage props from complex, multi-dimensional systems,
which are seemingly infinitive. Pictures manifest themselves under the
influence of that which is within one:
personality factors
(feelings – mind and spirit)
the structure of
personality (archeology of the psyche)
experiences (“… that
tell a story through the history”)
the physical-mental
constitution (“spontaneity – from the freedom of ecstasy … that pictures
allow”),
and from that, which is external. There is the attraction of a person
and/or an item, of a constellation of persons or items, which form a
situation that may only last a fraction of a second, but can be photographically
held firm as an image of the conditions of “existence.”
A picture is the permanent attempt to mirror the staggering between
the polarities, the eternal return to the beginning, the cycle of birth-life-death,
the in-between, the inner and outer, the emotion and the rational. Seeking
clarity, definiteness, a stopping point “to find the inner path, the
direction.” But the existence is unclear. Behind it is the question
of where one came from, why and where one will go.
Roger Lips titles his exhibited works “Zwischen oben als unten” (Between
Above as Beneath). The title comes from his analysis of Hermes Trismegistus
and his World Rules. The principle can be explained like this: “Above
as well as underneath: Everything that occurs on an upper level also
finds its equivalent in a lower level …; everything in the world is
bipolar …; between these … poles there rules a reciprocal flow of power.
Everything runs in rhythmic cycles, and is subject to the law of balance
and harmony.”
These principles are the basis for Roger Lips’ work. Roger Lips
is concerned with the between the poles that is found in the field of
tension. He wants to show that the relationships of the poles are reversible
in both directions: above <-> bottom, positive <-> negative, inside
<-> outside, etc.
The range of his artistic style of expression is diverse. One finds
scenes which intuitively moved him, their workmanship as part drawing/part
painting, the arrangement of selective enlargements up to abstraction,
the complete destruction or new creation – the combination of projections
one on top of another – of pictures and stage props, and the reversal
of positive into negative. With the color photos, the color is actually
never reproduced “real”: on the one hand almost monochrome-modulating
colorfulness, on the other – through re-working and the use of different
kinds of photo materials that bring about morbid color constellations,
up to new (in part) guided artificial color combinations and screen
appearances.
The main emphasis of this exhibition is the comparisons of two or
more “Photo-Graphics” (graphic: Greek graphein for writing or
to scratch; afterwards re-working by hand) that become new photo combinations
that correspond with one another.
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Without title, 1988 |
Without title, 1988 |
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Without
title, 1988 |
“New rhythm, harmony, disharmony …”: Sometimes they are a pair of pictures
that are next to or on top of one another, sometimes reminiscent of the
classic form of the triptych or also presented as a line-up of variations
of the same picture.
With the first group of pictures portrayed here one sees an iconographic
symbol-like drawing (“censured gestures”) set against a depersonalized
portrait of “helplessness.” Both of the pictures are flanked by black
portions which, if one refers back to the classic triptych function where
the side-panel pictures allude to the middle picture, appear here simply
as black boundaries and offer no differentiating reference other than
just that: to be black, “imprisoned in darkness.”
In the second group of pictures a previously made picture is projected on
the wall, whose surface is not the usual smooth one, but a rather uneven
screen which finds itself in more of a stage of decay. The scenery has
been photographically copied and is seen as an image of a projected image
(time-space continuum). “… the projection of the inner picture of the
viewer”: A person caught in the beam of light of the gestures of the person
effected/singled out, “… heart gripping.” In the lower picture there is
a reversal: A formerly white streak of light (from the positive print)
is shown in the negative or in the re-reversal as a dark, snake-like form,
which winds its way into an unclear constellation and is threatening.
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Without title, 1984/88 |
Without title, 1984/88 |
In the third group of pictures a landscape is shown, seeming at first to be
far away but nevertheless with specific details greatly enlarged. It is
thus grainy in the structure, almost pointillistic in style – a terraced
landscape with parceled-out areas that are easily visible, “… a possible
form of life.” The bottom picture shows the detailed section of a face,
this time exaggeratedly enlarged so that only the mouth is in the center
of the picture. Stretched wide open and in its distinctness it clearly
illustrates a battle between great effort and resistance, possibly a bellow,
a scream that hasn’t yet fully developed – a roar of liberation?!
We could say many things in a language whose words drift away like signals
in imperceivable rooms that seem to be lost, as we attempted to form a
picture of periods of time that we call the future, although it is our
past. Ready not to recognize that which is known. The existence that appears
to be taken for granted suddenly becomes a question “… the coincidence
is part of the game -- is the possibility..."
Manfred Geissler, Cologne, July 1988
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