Background
Postdigital Placement Model after Tobias Post
For me art is always also a stance and a school of thought. So that it becomes clear what moves me, what lies behind the art, and why that does not open up through mere "looking at", I sketch out here the theory with which I view and describe my work.
Usually the view is determined through the lens of one simplified and single perspective on art: through the eyes of a craftsman as skill, of a dealer as sale value, of an athlete as competition, of a politician as opinion, and many more. Countless professions occur to me at once, each with its own yardstick.
In many cases it stops at that one linear judgement in a single dimension, whose aim is then a ranking of art. Unconsciously it soon arrives at verdicts such as "I find that picture beautiful", "that is too shallow" or "it lacks density". It is easy to file that straight away as a classic prejudice.
For me, "in the eye of the beholder" does not mean the determination of a value and a judgement, but first of all an unconscious placement of the point of view and of the frame of meaning.
In my stance I class this form of judgement as naive. Of course I have such impulses in me too when I look at art. I see that as a challenge to look more closely. The maturity of one's viewing of art grows once one has one's own frame of meaning clearly in view.
Art lies in the eye of the beholder - and precisely for that reason, viewing is itself a form of placement: not because everything is arbitrary, but because every reading chooses points of reference and thereby produces meaning.
I would point out in advance in particular my extended understanding of representation, as well as a form of adding context that does not create an overview through distance, as simplification does in abstraction, but establishes a distance of visibility through enriching placement.
The particular quality of art
As an artist it matters to me to stay curious and - yes - to press ahead with a certain delusion of grandeur: to stand on the shoulders of giants with a new view, and then to place something of my own.
"Art is placement" is a central core concept for me. I learned it from my art teacher almost forty years ago. At the time, as a pupil, I did not yet grasp how far it reaches.
For me placement means awareness and reflection: understanding visible decisions - whether something is a "gestural placement", the result of rules, or embedded in a chain of preconditions.
Making decisions in art has a quality of its own - in contrast to research in the sciences and the search for verifiable truth. Art is creative and generative; for me that is a universal and powerful insight.
Every artist - consciously or unconsciously - moves within traditions, copies, deviations and the new. In their artistic position, artists are often shaped by convictions and schools of style. One does not begin at zero; one is always embedded.
My perception is that what is new in art can often be hard to position cleanly - and therefore gets stuck in a simplified view of art. It matters to me to make the particularity of an artistic position easier to explain. What follows are therefore short introductions to current, problematic fields of discussion. After that I set out my own postdigital placement model.
Background, and the need for a clear school of thought
The challenge of digital art
Digital art is - through time and interactivity - often stylistically more in flux than traditional visual art. Even kinetic sculpture, video and media art, which also work with time, appear stylistically more stable in many cases. In digital art, with its interactivity through the viewer, style, forces and context can change continuously: the target one is talking about moves along with it.
The roots
The historical placing of contemporary digital art within traditions or visible roots in particular often strikes me as less stable, because frames of reference shift more quickly.
Curatorial thematic logic
In the business of presenting art, a convenient sorting logic often arises: "traditional" versus "digital", "old" versus "young". These are less descriptions of actual practice than labels for quick communication. My interest lies beneath that: which placements are made - independently of the medium? Where is the inner logic, where the break, where the decision?
Curatorial framing is indispensable for art: it creates a public, context and legibility. At the same time, institutions, funding logics and formats of communication generate pressure towards an unambiguous narrative.
My criticism is not directed against themes, but against the moment in which the artistic placement disappears behind a curatorial formula of purpose. The work is then no longer visible as authorship, but as evidence within a narrative.
My proposal is a different balance: theme, yes - but visible as an artistically placed object within the work, not as a legitimation set in front of it. That way the artistic perspective remains recognisable, and the discourse gains depth.
Mechanical mass production and AI
New - and highly charged - are the discussions and fears around generative AI. For me the central question is less "consciousness" than authorship: who makes the decisive placements, who carries responsibility, who answers for context and effect?
AI can supply material, accelerate variation, propose patterns - but an artistic position arises where an artist makes a selection, sets limits, takes responsibility for meanings and presents the work as a stance. Artists should position themselves here with confidence and clarity.
A general field model for circling in on art
To make my school of thought comprehensible, I shall first explain a general field model. This model describes one way of placing works of art in order to explore their connection to tradition, styles, contexts and concepts more deeply - and thereby to make them more discussable and more open to experience. Beyond that, it helps to set works and artists in relation to one another.
The aim is to move away from a simple, style-oriented one-word description and to do real justice to the development and change of artistic becoming.
One takes up various points of view and determines proximity and distance in relation to the work. Through further placements one defines points of observation within a field. Points of reference can be, for example, artistic styles, schools, principles, contexts, properties, form, content - or freely chosen perspectives on art.
The choice of reference points is a deliberate placement by the artist or by the viewer, in order to come closer to works in their inner logic.
- "Art is placement" (by the artist).
- "To define points of observation is placement" (by the viewer).
- "Positioning is analysis and discussion" (by the viewer).
The position is described by proximity to and distance from the reference points. With this model one can engage very freely with any subject and any art. Artists are of course viewers too. Artists can consciously set reference points before placing the work and orient themselves by them - the viewer's gaze, however, is not bound to them in its freedom.
Postdigital Placement Model after Tobias Post
Out of my practice, my most important points of view are informel, concrete art and representation. These three perspectives form my field points, in order to make my works more accessible, more visible and easier to explain.
Momentum
In cultural-studies discussion, "postdigital" roughly denotes a present in which digitality no longer counts as novelty, but as a self-evident part of our reality in life and in art. Digitality is artistic present - not automatically innovation.
I have worked artistically with digital methods too for more than four decades. As an artist who thinks like a painter, the digital is for me a central building block for integrating time and interactivity as momentum. It lets me place change within a single work, without necessarily depending on serial groups of works.
Informel
As a child of my time I am strongly shaped by informel. My painting is to be understood as gesture - in its singular, momentary uniqueness. Every stroke is movement and anchored in the moment of the present. (Zen meditation sends its regards.)
Concrete art
Concrete art is close to me not least through my professional experience as a software developer. Analytical, abstracting, ordering and architectural thinking is a kind of lifeline for me. In Germany this tradition is strongly anchored, among others, through the Bauhaus.
Two stylistic poles of one axis
Put simply, informel and concrete art are for me two poles between creative spontaneity and clear concept. Every work - and every artistic practice - moves between them; hardly anything reaches these ideals in pure form. For me both opposing poles are universally involved in any creative work.
Numerous definitions and explanations exist for both directions. Placing them historically is complex and marked by research as well as by debate; philosophical thinking often resonates with it.
Representation
In everyday use, "representation" is mostly understood as reference to things that can be touched or seen and that can be depicted in a picture. The perceived distance of the picture from reality is then often read as a degree of abstraction or simplification. Abstraction thus moves fluidly between the representational and the non-representational.
At first glance, informel and concrete art appear non-representational and therefore "pure". If, however, no reference point at all - no counterpart - is thought along with it, the term "abstraction" loses its edge, for abstraction normally presupposes that something is abstracted from something.
The reference point as a placement of viewing
From a meta perspective, forming a reference point in relation to the work is a placement made by viewing. It matters to me to stress this: forming an object that "stands opposite" the depiction can be a decision of the viewer - much as one recognises a portrait, a chair or a landscape in a shape.
Taken to the extreme: someone sees a blue surface and decides, "that is an elephant". Or one chooses an internal reference and says: the blue colour is its own counterpart - as the concept of colour.
Conversely, one can also view any picture read as representational without any reference to an object and weigh it non-representationally. At what point does the pure contemplation of form itself already become an "object" of contemplation?
This shows that it is not necessarily about a counterpart in external reality, but about something standing opposite within subjective experience. "Representation" is therefore often more intellectual and philosophical than it appears at first glance - and goes beyond the idea of the realistic depiction.
Adding context
Abstraction lives on simplification. The essence of abstracting is leaving out. By "adding" rules or gestural placement I can move the object into a widened point of view. Representation thereby loses the character of standing alone and has to give up completeness. The object shares the whole with something new and becomes more encompassing; the object loses, the whole grows larger. That is not classical abstraction, but it clarifies the context through the opposite approach.
It is a counterpart to leaving out, and a creative adding. It matters to me to use an addition of elements from informel or concrete art deliberately as a clear counter-pole to representation.
Background: discussability
To come back to the discussability of art: a concept, a principle or a socially relevant theme can also be seen as an "object" within the work. It thereby gains a place in the artistic context instead of floating free. The artistic position can then be located - in discussion of content too - through degrees of abstraction and set in relation to the formal work.
Pragmatically, this approach also allows diagrams and field models to be drawn up, in order to make artists and works comparable. The postdigital placement model is thus a flexible model for viewing art, in order to enter a work more deeply, in more layers and more consciously through different points of view. It offers a framework for making language more precise relationally - with fixed references.
Continuation
All this is in general only a first entry point. Working out the poles in different stylistic sub-categories in particular is highly interesting. I find it very rewarding to go close to the artwork here and to join clearly visible gestures and rules with the analysis.
A note
It matters to me to stress that none of this is about judgement, a contest of quality or authority over interpretation. It is not about placing one point of view above another and thereby enforcing hierarchies.
Art possesses a quality of its own that reaches far beyond truth, knowledge and value. Consciousness can grow, and being human can be lifted, wherever freedom, respect and a compassionate stance are possible.