Heute abend, Szofia, Lisbon, 2006
german
PDF
Heute abend, Szofia
Impressive above all the corners imperceptibly upcurved. A smile? Is it possible? Ghost of an ancient smile smiled finally once and for all. Such ill half seen the mouth in the light of the last rays. Suddenly they leave it. Rather it leaves them. Off again to the dark. There to smile on. If smile is what it is. - Samual Beckett, Ill seen ill said

The series of paintings Thomas Kratz has been developing since 2004 follows a leimotiv: a smiley, a smiling face, eyes, nose, mouth - dot, dot, comma, dash. A conceivably primitive but effective motif: a simple line becomes a smiling mouth through the simple upturning of the corners, and immediately releases a feeling of friendliness one can hardly escape. The smile is a basic word of human expression, deeply rooted in our thought and perceptive structures as an archaic Urmotiv: infants can distinguish smiling faces after just a few weeks. Thus, a smiling face can be represented through the simplest and most abstract basic forms without losing on recognizability. The pictogram-like short-form of the smiling face is the Smiley :-), made out just four elements, a circle, two dots and an upcurved horizontal line. Depicted on stickers, pins, ecstasy pills or FIFA Worldcup t-shirts, it is promises happiness, cheerfulness and good mood. The smiley is direct, impossible to misunderstand, of stupendous simplicity, and still highly effective. Because it works at an emotional level, it raises immediate reactions. Even a very abstract depiction like :-) is able to communicate without a problem joy or humour in an e-mail _ 'Emoticon' appears thus as the appropriate term for this form of communication through images.


The smiling faces reduced to the essential take the central role in Thomas Kratz series - centred and occupying the visual field, they propose the main theme of the series. Deviations from the basic system become apparent, new variantionjs keep emerging. Each face is overcoated and undercoated with many other layers of painting, combining and merging into a condensed plyphonic unit. Abstract patterns, colour surfaces, but als objective motifs form the surface into which the face sinks and out of which it raises. In some pictures, the Smiley faces comes out of the dark, partly lacquered backgrounds of many layers, forming abstract stripes or chequered patterns. The face is decomposed into elementary basic forms or pixelised - in this way making the tension between abstraction and realism perceptible and reminding us of Jawlensky's decade-long processing of the Face subject. The thin line that seperates abstraction from realism also becomes clear as the search for anthropological constants of the human face. Other pictures refer to typical Balthus motifs: a girl, a bird, a cat. Coloured patterns, rays, suns, waves or whirls compress into oneiric spaces, where from a girl's hand a bird escapes, symbolizing the departure into another world, to another level of consciousness.

In this context, the Smiley's at first rather primitiv smile makes way for a deeper dimension. Because the smile is not just the expression of pleasure, but also that of mystery: death's final smile, the smiling martyr, the smile of the clever virgins, sure that they will go to Heaven, the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa or the eternal smile of Buddha. Smiling can belong to the deeper spiritual plane and it can transcend eternity or the ever-lasting without ever expressing it explicity. Smiling is always but a suggestion, it dissipates after a short moment, or it risks turning into a grin or into a set beam. Here lies the reason why it is so difficult to secure the fleetingnes of the smile in a picture. Thomas Kratz chose the mask-like frozen form that is the dot-comma-dash face, its rigidity suppressed by the fusion, the sinking and the surfacing in the picture's background. By concentrating pictures with the same format, the room is turned into a panopticum of smiling faces orbiting and encircling the viewer; faces emerging from the dark or from the fabric of forms only to disappear in them again. A mask merry-go-'round with a taste of archaic and rite - the picture becomes the Other, because that which has eyes looks back at you. And in every smile there is consciousness. It is the door ajar to another world, in where 'to smile on'.
Text: Daniela Stoeppel