Fang Zhiling=Fang: You were born in Leipzig and moved to Karlsruhe at the age of 9. We know that many important contemporary German painters come from eastern Germany. Marcus L ü pez, Gerhard Richter, George Bartheliz, A.R. Punk, Neo Lauch, and others are very familiar German artists in the Chinese art community. But your art seems to come from a completely different system from theirs. Please talk about the basic situation of your early learning of art.
Enrico Bach=Bach: I am much younger than any of the aforementioned artists. Because almost all the artists mentioned were born in post-war Germany, the historical events and political situations they experienced in their childhood shaped these artists. And I was born in East Germany in 1980 and grew up in a completely different era, which cannot be compared at all. When I was a child, I witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and grew up in a politically calm system. Our generation has been greatly influenced by media technology innovation since we were teenagers - computers, phones, apps, MP3 players, and digitization have shaped my views and art. During my art studies, these media were also a part of my studies in addition to traditional college education. Every generation is directly shaped by the external and political environment.
Fang: You graduated from the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts in 2010 and have received the Bonn Art Foundation Award (national level), the Baden Wurttemberg Art Foundation Award (state level), and the State Academy of Fine Arts Rookie Award. As a rookie, what are your characteristics that have attracted the attention of the art community?
Bach: At that time, I had already applied for these awards through my project, and fortunately, my work received recognition from the jury. Winning these awards just after completing my studies marks the beginning of my artistic career, bringing me more attention and recognition, and making my career easier. These bonuses provide me with financial support, eliminating the need to work for a living and giving me time to focus on my artistic creations. I also have the opportunity to publish catalogs and hold exhibitions to better showcase my art. If I hadn't won these awards, a novice artist like me might not have achieved so quickly.
Fang: From 2013 to 2014, you painted a series of interpretive works by other artists (such as Rembrandt's "Dr. Dup's Anatomy Class"), where the concrete body was extracted and transformed into an abstract form, while retaining the sense of space and the atmosphere of light and shadow. In your series of creations, what is the significance of this transformation from concrete to abstract in this stage of work for the later appearance of creation?
Bach: At that time, I only drew abstract paintings. In 2010, I did a lot of research on image analysis in the final theory exam. When I was interpreting a Vermeer painting, I found that there was no consensus from the artist's perspective. So I want to analyze this work from the perspectives of color and composition, thereby ignoring its historical and creative background. From this point on, I abstractly deconstructed a series of master works from the same perspective. Because all of my works in this series were created at a specific point in time, and I don't want my creative direction to be too arbitrary, after the "Remix" series ended, I once again devoted myself wholeheartedly to my creations.
Fang: In terms of visual language, you have been greatly influenced by Imi Knoebel. For you, what are the main aspects of this influence? What do you think is the most fundamental difference between yourself and him?
Bach: I think Imi Knobel was a great artist. I incorporate inspiration from the works of Imi Knobe into some of my works. But I think it's more like a demo in music, where you extract segments from the song and use them in your own song and remix them. I think our generation is a 'sampling' generation, and new media enables us to play like this. In my era, there were always various conflicts with art that had occurred before. The future will also be the same, as the younger generation needs to first face the art that predecessors have already created.
Fang: For a long time, your painting gave the impression of a state between abstract and concrete: on the one hand, it was a delicate combination of various geometric lines, shapes, and color blocks, and the visual logic of the work was clearly abstract. On the other hand, the final image often reminded people of some ordinary objects with no special meaning: blinds, tiles, files, folders, discarded paper strips Are building components... retaining this basic visual feeling because they are the source of a series of abstract elements in your work? Is there another reason?
Bach: Actually, I can find inspiration for my paintings everywhere in my daily life, and then I decide whether to turn them into art by abstracting them and incorporating them into my works. This can be a variety of things, such as houses, or color combinations of newspaper articles. But I won't start with an object and try to abstract it. Friends or collectors often point out to me that they recognize things in their paintings that I have never seen before.
Fang: Abstract art has gone through a considerable development process in the West, from the initial hot abstraction, cold abstraction, supremacy to later abstract expressionism. In recent years, Sean Sculley, John McLean, and others have also received considerable attention from Chinese art. In addition, people are also familiar with abstract paintings by Gerhard Richter. We know that abstract painting has also developed well in Germany, and there is a group of Chinese artists who stay in Germany and do abstract art. But overall, there are still significant differences between your art and some of the abstract art forms we are familiar with. How do you view the relationship between your art and the abstract art system or tradition?
Bach: Art is always a mirror of the times and also a mirror of the place of creation. In the history of art, there is always inheritance or confrontation with previous trends or artworks. This is how artistic trends shape themselves over time. Of course, this is also related to the social background in which artists grew up. In Germany, people's social backgrounds are different from those in China. We have different traditions, writing, reading habits, and behavioral norms, so it's not surprising that art produces different results. I believe that I am in a strictly traditional system of abstract art, so I often have conversations with my previous abstract art and try to respond.
