Andreas Felger, untitled, 2012
Oil on Canvas, 200 x 400 cm © AFKS
UNTITLED
2012
OIL ON CANVAS
200 x 400 cm

 

Not only the work, also the context makes the art. The personal context, the historical, the spatial, the thematic … many more could be added. Here, therefore, we should not only talk about a work, but also about a space, a picture installation and a personal perception.

In 2017, presentations of Andreas Felger’s works took place simultaneously in two churches in Baden-Baden. In the Stadtkirche, the well-traveled “Credo” cycle was shown, and in the St. Josefskirche Lichtental, a single oil painting hung: “Untitled,” 2 x 4 meters. “Hanging” is the right word, because it hung freely in the room, according to my memory on very thin and therefore hardly visible wire ropes stretched from the ceiling. The painting is in two parts, so it could be disassembled for transport and the halves had to be bolted together for hanging. On wobbly ladders in very airy heights, employees of the church and the foundation (to which I belonged), pulled up the capital, difficult to direct picture and brought it into the balance – pursued by the uneasiness, the action lasting several hours could still fail at the last moment!

Finally, it was ‘done’, the ladders and tools were cleared away, and what had just weighed materially heavy expressed itself in an uplifting ethereal way: the floating of the picture created the impression of weightlessness, its size corresponded with the vastness of the church interior, its colors radiating from the depth of the picture found their echo in the colored glass windows of the building, and the peculiar compositional form in the center of the picture had a dynamic effect, as if it were not firmly anchored on the picture ground. It is not a heart shape, but for me it still has the quality of an organ related to my body as a living organism. This constellation, the thematization of the (own) body, the image set free in space, and the building whose translucency and colors responded – was extraordinary and created a transcending moment even for an agnostic in the church.

by Marvin Altner

Marvin Altner holds a doctorate in art history and is a lecturer in art studies at the University of Kassel. After a traineeship at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, he worked as a research assistant and curator at museums in Berlin and Hamburg and as a freelance author in the field of visual arts from the 19th century to the present. Since 2012, he has been teaching at the Kunsthochschule Kassel in the art studies program and works as a research assistant for the Andreas Felger Kulturstiftung, including as author, exhibition coordinator, and supervisor of the database of Andreas Felger’s works.