“Oil and Discarded Matter on Canvas“ is Asef-Burckhardt‘s take on “landscape painting“: they use oil to fixate landscape on canvas. Making a turn from classical oil landscape painting, the medium of representation becomes the holder of environmental fragments and in this way, concretion takes hold.
As with the rest of Asef-Burckhardt‘s production, individual authorship merges into dual dynamics where decision-making occurs within an area of thirdness-sharing. On an intimate level, the paintings act as a memory of place, a diary act, a fragment fixated. On an discursive level, they offer an environmental record.
Sabeth Burchmann has written about Asef-Burckhardt‘s works in Texte zur Kunst:
„By using charred redwood tree remnants and dried pampas grass, both as found materials and as drawing tools, […] Asef and Burckhardt invert the […] concept of recycling into a formal-aesthetic reversal of medium and message. […] not as a finished historical project but as an open-ended material speculation on the coastal landscape: as if the waves, rocks, shrubs, trunks, branches, and leaves have always contained the conditions for their perceptual-aesthetic reproduction. In this spirit, Asef and Burckhardt’s works collapse (re)production and reception into one. […] landscape was not something to be looked at but from – and was something which also looked back.“
Read full article: THE MATTER IS THE MESSAGE – Sabeth Buchmann on Asef–Burckhardt at MOS Art Center, Gorzów Wielkopolski
Photos: Asef-Burckhardt
