UNTITLED
2007
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
36,5 x 27,5 CM

We are looking at a hand-sized sheet, little bigger than a Din A4 sheet, but the deviation from the usual format of everyday correspondence makes us look more closely. Also, the irregular edges of the sheet, the tinted paper color, the stronger quality of the paper and the fine texture of the surface contribute to seeing in this sheet a material object and not a pure (white) surface that offers little resistance to touch.

The irregularities in the paper’s surface stand out especially under the semi-transparent tones of the eight color bands, which only become denser at their overlapping areas. Andreas Felger’s steady hand creates only slight heels and waves in the contours of the lines. The artist interrupted and frayed their gentle flow wantonly with dry brush hairs to the point of scratch marks from the woody end of the brushstroke.

The swaths of color appear uniform and orderly, yet each asserts its own life. To the right and left, two orange-reddish verticals frame the picture plane; between them, offset to the left, is a deep dark blue vertical. It is overlaid by a green curved line, which meets a yellow arc at the top, both are intersected by a red-brownish diagonal and all lines are finally crossed by two pale blue arcs curved in opposite directions, which are the only ones approaching the horizontal.

The eye likes to follow them … and with time of contemplation, echoes of figures, rivers, branches can be heard. Whether corresponding color trajectories are seen here or the impression of the corporeal is guessed at – the relationship of abstraction to figuration remains open. But that is the art: to transform the simplicity of the individual forms and colors into an allusive, animated network of relationships that, when viewed over a longer period of time, almost have something human about them.

Text by Marvin Altner