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By Charles Agar
For sixty seconds, just stop and watch. The painting lights from
within and transforms from a dull plane to a glowing surface, revealing
another dimension and at once uncovering and concealing images and
meaning in layers of paint. The method is quite pleasingly analogue,
no computer animation, no bells or whistles, but a unique technique
called "light painting" pioneered by Leo Musch, painter,
sculptor, teacher and traveller from Holland. After an opening at
the city's exclusive Pacific City Club in the Landmark building,
the works are on a more permanent display from January at Witch's
on 33.
A graduate of Academy of Art in Amsterdam, where he would later
teach, Musch has lived in the South of France for many years and
has been coming and going to and from Thailand, splitting time between
Bangkok and Phuket, for as long. An energized presence, the artist
has a warm smile and exudes the comfortable aura and perceptive
gaze of a teacher after years at the head of the classroom in classical
drawing and painting workshops. Most recently, Musch held a special
course at the Boathouse, a resort and fine dining venue on Kata
Beach in Phuket.
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Suzuki Gallery in New York exhibits Musch regularly and he has
been patronized by many large banks and multinational firms and
has been featured in larger retrospectives. Musch's current work,
a clever deviation from de rigueur two-dimensional painting, is
the culmination of many years of experiment in traditional medium
and reflects Musch's desire to capture light and emotion in flux,
to create deeper, meaningful dimensions and perspectives out of
the flat plane. Beginning with more traditional abstract works on
canvas, Musch's fascination for light and notions of opacity and
transparency led to a successful series of works executed on large,
malleable sheets of clear plastic. These pieces were exhibited at
his 1992 opening in Brussels and featured in that year's calendar
honoring the European Commission. Musch's latest "light paintings"
are the next step in his ongoing experimentation.
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So, what are light paintings? Using a special transparent acrylic
paint designed to handle high heat, Musch works on a see-through
sheet of plastic, called lexon-foli, and paints in a meticulous,
additive process, layering paint on both sides of the translucent
panel. The panel is then mounted as the front face of a shallow
box and low-watt bulbs illuminate the work from inside. More than
ten layers of paint on the panel surface means that light cannot
pass through and such areas don't react to the internal light fluctuation;
any fewer than nine layers of paint makes for varying gradations
of transparency and Musch is always playing with this, teasing out
meaning from what is revealed or concealed in the layers of each
work. The boxes, specially manufactured for Musch here in Thailand,
are hooked to a dimmer and a timer runs the lights through one minute
cycles from dark to light and back.
The effect is quite unique. What is produced with the changing lights
is progressive, like a film, and the viewer watches the painting
evolve over each cycle. Musch's colors are bold, rich reds and deep
browns constantly in flux from the infusion of light. The works
in this recent exhibit mingle elements of representation with broad,
expressive strokes. Musch juxtaposes oversized portraiture with
figure drawings in miniature, graphic flourishes against flat space
and each work creates a reality of its own, here erotic, there violent
and all quite expressive. Musch is concerned with human relationships:
foremost, the relationship between the viewer and the painting.
"If it says everything," Musch tells us, "then it
is not a painting."
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The theme of the works is "revealing" not in any voyeuristic
sense but of the work itself revealing character, mood and eliciting
a different response from the viewer with each phase of the light
cycle. The influence seems cinematic, and the artist indeed acknowledges
a debt to the French New Wave, but says that what he offers are
"ideas and thoughts" more than just images, and certainly
nothing is spoon-fed to the viewer in any kind of traditional story.
Scenes of a city, of lovers intertwined, fragments of figures and
large portraits reveal bits of story, but nothing coherent; instead,
Musch asks the viewers to bring their own perspective to each work,
in effect to write the story themselves. One piece, entitled "Distorted
Intimacy," plays with our perceptions, obscuring the actors
in a confusing mingle of bodies, a scene infused with a passionate
red glow when lit from within. Another work, "Powerless,"
shows a large shouting portrait and smaller figure, a father and
child perhaps. "Concealed" is a striking work that "reveals"
the double portrait of a 1940's American starlet, the likes of a
Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell, but the light from within the painting
uncovers a pair of menacing eyes that speak of the gaze of the viewer,
of lust and obsession. A unique collection.
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Leo Musch's light paintings bravely toe the line between kitsch
and innovation, the danger being that viewers see these pieces as
lamps or like the tasteless, light-up velvet cityscapes popular
in three-star hotels. Musch's vision and attentive process avoids
any such associations and instead presents us with a unique, viewer-oriented
experience; his is a unique medium and he pulls it off with aplomb.
It is still kind of fun to think of a piece of art that needs to
be plugged-in and turned on though and Andy Warhol would have loved
it. And what is next for the Dutch expat, you ask? Hold your breath:
underwater painting. Stay tuned.
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