Dissolutions

“Dissolutions” describes that group of pictures where there is no sign of any kind of figure. However the pictures collected here are not really a group in the strictest sense, since they all have a different origin with various reasons triggering their creation.

The first picture is a simple time exposure without any further manipulation to be seen (No. 039). The picture was found framed as part of the estate, but up to now it could not be proven that it had been part of a public exhibition.

The second picture shown here is also not a dissolution in the strictest sense. Here the reproduction of a Lips’ drawing (one without figures anyway) was the slide used as the starting point.

The small square picture (No. 072) was shown together with the “blue head” (No. 020) in the first Cologne exhibition; later it was never exhibited again. It is a section from an enzymatic processed slide.

The same is true for No. 026.

By clicking on the pictures you can get large-scale reproductions with a bit of further information. The numbers are the numbers in the Catalogue of Artwork. You can scroll back and forth when you are at the large reproductions level.

In the early ’80s the pictures that were done via enzyme processing and the subsequent enlargement of a detail from “abstract” photos were used by Lips almost exclusively as layers for the construction of backgrounds in other pictures.

It was only for a larger showing of his work in 1991 that Lips enlarged a series of further pictures that had been done in the middle of the ’80s.

However the three illuminated display cases that were also done in 1991 play a special role here. They form the last step in the critical look at the portrait of a young man (also see the exhibition of “The Blue Head”).

This work especially demonstrates in an exemplary fashion the step-by-step de-construction and dissolution of the image of a person in pure color and form.