"Tree time means a Good time!"

  Some articles in magazines and newspapers
 about my photo project "Images in Trees"

For more information please take a look at: this

and that

Have a Good time too !

Art Basel 2013 - "Importance of being abstract" / "Energizing the Abstract" an imagenistical approach by Paul Rolans

The Art Newspaper

“Importance of being abstract”

Abstract art dominates the fair as collectors seek less flashy works and artists begin to update the form

By Charlotte Burns, Melanie Gerlis and Julia Michalska. From Art Basel daily edition
Published online: 12 June 2013

Abstract art, the form that dominated the 20th century, once again reigns supreme at the 44th edition of Art Basel. As the fair opened yesterday to the great, the rich and the famous—including the man of the month, Massimiliano Gioni, the director of the Venice Biennale, Russia’s power couple Roman Abramovich and Dasha Zhukova, and the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Lukas Haas—visitors were confronted with a variety of non-representative, non-figurative art.

Historical pieces by abstract pioneers include kinetic sculptures by Alexander Calder (such as Blue Flower, Red Flower, 1975, at Tina Kim/Kukje, 2.0/F6, priced at $2.8m), Minimalist wall pieces by Donald Judd (including Untitled (Ballantine 89-49), 1989, priced at $2.4m with David Zwirner, 2.0/F5) and various large abstract works by Richter (a 1984 example is on show at Richard Gray Gallery, 2.0/E4, priced at $6.5m; a piece from 1992 is on offer with Dominique Lévy Gallery, 2.0/F4, for “under $20m”). In equal abundance are works by contemporary artists who have taken on the abstract mantle, including Christopher Wool (Untitled, 2001, at Luhring Augustine, 2.0/E13, $1.5m) and Albert Oehlen (FM44, 2011, which sold to a European collector for €250,000 within hours of the fair’s opening at Galerie Max Hetzler, 2.0/E7).

“The abstract abounds,” says Lisa Spellman, the founder of New York’s 303 Gallery (2.1/J21). She is showing non-figurative works priced between $150,000 and $250,000, including two large 2013 works by the gallery’s recently recruited artist Jacob Kassay, which were bought together by a European private collector, and six ceramic works by Nick Mauss, which sold for $23,000 each. Sean Kelly (2.1/N2) designed his stand according to “different ideas of abstraction”, centred around Joseph Kosuth’s Titled (Art as Idea as Idea), 1967, priced at €100,000. “There’s a lot of really good [abstract] work being done across all media right now—painting, photography, conceptual—and we wanted to reflect that,” he says. New works on show include Callum Innes’s Untitled, 2013, a large oil and shellac canvas, which sold to a private US collector for £50,000.

The artist Ad Reinhardt famously said that his 1960s “black” abstract works marked the end of painting, but the abstract form “remains wide open to fresh contributions”, says Robert Storr, the dean of the Yale University School of Art, who is organising a Reinhardt exhibition for David Zwirner in New York this November. It is “one of the great inventions of Modern art that is barely a century old”—rather, it is “a century young”, he says. 

Can today’s artist move the once-radical form in a new, meaningful direction? “The problem is, there is a group of lower-tier abstract painters who are good and whose work looks beautiful, but what they are bringing to the table in terms of art history is nothing new. They are not adding to the conversation,” says the New York-based art adviser Lisa Schiff.

She highlights exceptions whom she thinks are “making enough of a formal innovation to stand alone”. These include the US artist Garth Weiser, whose Sedaka, 2013, sold for $55,000 to a private US collector within half an hour of the fair’s opening at Casey Kaplan (2.1/N16). Massimo De Carlo (2.1/N3) has hung three equal-sized abstract works by different artists next to each other, to “explore the possibilities of abstract art”, says Flavio del Monte, the gallery’s institutional relations manager. “We are bombarded by images everywhere today, so it is important for artists to take some distance,” he says. Loring Randolph, a director at Casey Kaplan, says: “The abstract is always relevant; you can have a rhetoric behind it that can be whatever you want.” Today’s practitioners, she says, “think about how the concept [of the abstract] and the process can work together”.

Process is key: artists are experimenting with materials and technology that were previously unavailable, to update the form. Denise René’s stand (2.0/D19) includes works by the Brussels-based artist group LAb[au]. The pieces, such as Particle Springs, 2011, priced at €27,000, use computer algorithms to create moving, smoke-like patterns on monitors. Mitchell-Innes & Nash (2.0/E6) is showing avant-garde masters such as Franz Kline (Provincetown II, 1959, around $10m) alongside younger artists including Keltie Ferris (Laissez-Faire, 2013, $50,000), whose work is inspired by graffiti and digitalisation.

For some, abstract art provides the chance to explore art history in a new way. At Galerie Nordenhake (2.1/P9), the 29-year-old artist Paul Fägerskiöld has used spray paint to create a homage to both Jackson Pollock and the Pointillists in his monochrome Untitled (Yellow), 2013, €25,000, which sold to a private German museum. At Sperone Westwater (2.0/E10), Emil Lukas’s thread-painting diptych panels Curtain East and Curtain West, 2013, which sold for $65,000, are influenced by Sol LeWitt. 

The trend is market-led, too. The boom years were characterised by flashy, self-explanatory art, but there has been a return to more thoughtful, abstract forms such as those produced by artists within the European Zero group. “We staged an exhibition of their work in 2008, which raised consciousness for an American audience to whom the work seemed new. The response was strong and has increased,” says Angela Westwater, the co-director of Sperone Westwater. The gallery is showing works by artists associated with the group, including Lucio Fontana’sConcetto spaziale, 1958, priced at around €1m, and Otto Piene’s 1975 oil and fire on canvas, Red Matters, priced at €250,000. Meanwhile, post-recession records have been achieved at auction for works by abstract artists, including the $43.8m paid for Barnett Newman’s Onement VI, 1953, at Sotheby’s in New York last month. “Collectors now want quieter, intellectual art with more depth. The years of the loud, funny works are over,” says Bob van Orsouw (2.1/P17), who is showing works including a wall sculpture by the Dutch conceptual artist Ger van Elk (Los Angeles Freeway Flyer, 1973, €125,000). 

The fact that much abstract art is easy on the eye (and looks good above the sofa) could be one of the attractions for some of the new buyers who have entered the market since 2008, according to some in the trade. “It doesn’t seem so long ago that figurative art was the latest fashion; now it’s good-looking abstract,” one London dealer says. Others do not see the problem. “Who says that decorative art is not also serious art? Matisse and virtually all of Islamic tradition attest to the fact that it is or can be,” Robert Storr says, adding: “Is Mondrian eye-candy?”

Signac, les couleurs de l´eau / Paul Rolans, des Images dans l´eau

„Dans le cadre de la seconde édition du festival Normandie Impressionniste consacrée au thème de l’eau, le musée des impressionnismes Giverny organise une exposition « Signac, les couleurs de l’eau ».

Comme Claude Monet, Paul Signac a trouvé une source d’inspiration constante dans l’évocation de l’eau et de ses couleurs.
Depuis les premières marines peintes sur le littoral normand avec une vigueur et une liberté impressionnistes jusqu’aux amples architectures portuaires aux couleurs vives d’après-guerre, la description de l’eau et du ciel offrirent à Signac un inépuisable prétexte à multiplier les variations chromatiques.”….continuez ici (site: Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny)

J´admire les oeuvres des impressionnistes beaucoup. Depuis dix ans,je travaille á mon projet “des Images dans l´eau“. Je le regarde comme une continuation de leur travail, avec des moyens d´aujourd´hui.

"Bountiful Harvest from the Color Fields - Keen Colorations à la Kenneth" by Paul Rolans

Color Field painting consciously distanced itself from societal referents and focused on the lyrical possibilities of color. For the first time since Impressionism, pure opticality held primacy over content and form. 

Michael McNay from The Guardian wrote:

Kenneth Noland, was one of the young artists tasked with seizing the star-spangled standard from the preceding warrior generation of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and bearing it aloft into battle. Even more than this, Noland enjoyed having Americans claiming him as the successor to the mantle of Matisse, but in truth he had more in common with the Bauhaus abstractionist Josef Albers, who moved to the US and taught Noland at Black Mountain college, North Carolina. Noland disliked what he regarded as Albers's doctrinaire approach, but his own practice of geometric abstraction remained indelibly marked by the old German's influence.

Noland became celebrated in the 1950s for his series of concentric circles in a dazzling array of colours; not, like the paintings of Jasper Johns, targets, but circles as a simple geometric form that could demonstrate an infinite number of colour combinations. Next came circles with blurred edges, like blazing catherine wheels, diamond shapes, diamonds within circles, chevrons and stripes. The message was colour, usually pure and always simple.
Read more

Did you see the exhibition:

Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today, Tate Liverpool

BY CHARLES DARWENT

 SUNDAY 31 MAY 2009

The Independent

“Since there has been art, there have been disagreements about colour – what it means, how to use it, whether it is a good or bad thing.

Vasari held that colore was Venetian, while disegno – roughly, drawing – was Florentine and thus (Vasari was from Florence) better. The row rumbled on for 400 years: drawing was rational, clever, Poussin; colour was sensuous, sensual, Rubens. And so things stood until the 20th century, when two changes took place, the subject of a show called Colour Chart at Tate Liverpool.

The first change was that the number and kind of colours available to artists mushroomed with developments in paint-making. This wasn't just about stuff sold in art shops: for the first time, artists took to buying colours from their local B&Q.

An early apostle of household paint was Picasso, who waxed particularly lyrical about a commercial enamel called Ripolin. The first burst of colour on the dowdy palette of Analytic Cubism came courtesy of Ripolin, in Picasso's Violin, Glass, Pipe and Anchor of 1912.

Largely, though, the hues and tints of hardware paints were still used as a means to an end – to convey mood or rhythm, or to reproduce the warmth of sun on brick. It was only after the Second World War that the idea of color gratia coloris – colour for colour's sake – took off, marking a second phase in the 20th century's chromatic revolution.

Various things brought this about. The first was a rebellion against the valuing of skill which had held sway since Phidias. As far back as 1921, Aleksandr Rodchenko's Pure Red Colour, Pure Yellow Colour, Pure Blue Colour, shown at Tate Modern earlier this year, had hinted that the hand no longer counted in painting – that a canvas covered in a single pigment was as valid a work as the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Still, Rodchenko had made his statement in artist's oils. Now, nonart paints – the kind of stuff anyone might buy and use for anything – brought the point home.

Modernity wasn't going to dwell in an ivory tower, or at least in academies and art museums. It was going to be made in ex-light industrial lofts and factories, and its making would be open to anyone with a tin of paint and a roller. (Or, in the case of Dan Flavin and Donald Judd fluorescent tubes and a steel cutter.)

Commercial paints, familiar to anyone who had ever decorated a spare room or sprayed a bent fender, were a visible sign of what Colour Chart's curator, Ann Temkin, calls the "de-skilling" of art. It was all very democratic, although, as often with democracy, not completely so.

Actually, there were three requirements to being a modern artist: a tin of paint, a roller and an idea. Bound up in the dissing of the hand in art was a new fetishising of the mind – a way of working that Sol LeWitt dubbed "conceptual". LeWitt's Wall Drawing #918, a room-sized work, announces its intentions in eye-frying, shop-bought colours, in the fact that it has a number rather than a name – it, too, might have been ordered from a shop – and that it wasn't made by LeWitt but by his assistants.

In the demotic phrase of the builder's yard, Wall Drawing #918was contracted out, and looks it. Changing attitudes towards colour in the 20th century aresummed up by a sequence of three German artists.

In the Bauhaus of the1930s, Josef Albers painted squares of Masonite, the chipboard of its day, insub-squares of overlapping colours. The beauty Albers sought was of systematisation, a literally chromatic scale to match a musical one. Forty years later, Gerhard Richter up-ended Albers' thinking by painting pictures that didn't just look like colour charts but actually were.

Works such as 1025 Colours are precisely what they claim to be: deadpan recreations of Pantone sheets, a self-referring self-advertisement. Twenty years on from Richter, Katharina Fritsch's Eight Paintings in Eight Colours (1991)shows the impossible position Richter had left her in. If you're a chromatic painter, where do you go from 1025Colours?

Fritsch's answer, a snapshot of art in the 1990s, is to turn the question into a game by putting single hues in big, academy frames”

ColourChart is that engaging thing, a show that takes something familiar and, by focussing on it, makes you see it afresh. By all means go.TateLiverpool (0151-702 7400) to 13 Sep

Andreas Gursky : Alles im Fluss / Paul Rolans: Alles im Fluss

Alles im Fluss so lautet der Überschrift eines Zeitungsartikels  von Andreas Rossmann in der FAZ vom 25.10.2012 ,anlässlich der Ausstellung von Andreas Gursky im Düsseldorfer Museum Kunstpalast.
Hier ein Abschnitt über Andreas Gurskys Serie "Bangkok"  und „Ocean“ und danach einige Beispiele aus meinem Fotoprojekt "Images in Water" woran ich seit 2003 kontinuierlich arbeite und das ich in 2007 zum ersten Mal ausgestellt habe:
„Auch„Bangkok“, die neueste, 2011 entstandene Fotoserie von Andreas Gursky, glänzt. Was „Bangkok“, neun große Hochformate, je gut drei auf gut zwei Meter, mit Bangkok zu tun hat, erschließt sich optisch nicht, denn Bangkok wird auf„Bangkok“ nicht erkennbar. Kein Palast und kein Buddha, nur Wasser, und das uferlos, mit Lichtstreifen oder Lichtmosaiken, die der dunkle, unruhige Grund zurückwirft, mal als gezackte, gleißende Vertikale, deren grauer Schatten und orangefarbener Reflex parallel laufen, mal als amorphe, scheinbar fliegende Flecken. Der Grund ist schwarzweiß, dazwischen wimmeln kleine bunte, dunkelgelbe, türkis- und rosafarbene Punkte und Einsprengsel.
Von der Stadt ist nichts zu sehen, nur der Fluss Chao Phraya, der sich finster und schwerfällig durch sie wälzt und sie, so suggeriert der Titel „Bangkok“,ganz in sich aufgenommen hat. Wie andere Flüsse in anderen Megacitys führt er Unrat mit sich: Abfall und Astwerk, einen Autoreifen, eine Plastikflasche und ein Präservativ, Zeitungs- und auch Blütenblätter - Zivilisationsmüll, aber nicht als Mahlstrom, sondern in einzelnen Schnipseln. Schwarz ist das Wasser, aber fließt es wirklich? Es könnte auch Lava oder Teer, Öl oder Schlick sein. Abwasser. Sauber sieht anders aus.
Der Fluss reflektiert, quecksilbrig und unruhig. Die Oberfläche täuscht, ein Verblendungszusammenhang. Ist es die Sonne oder ein Scheinwerfer, der den Fluss anstrahlt? Was die Stadt nicht mehr braucht und ausstößt, wird vom Chao Phraya aufgenommen, mitgeschoben. „Alles im Fluss“ erhält einen doppelten Sinn. Hauptverkehrsader und ökologische Katastrophe, selbst glänzend und die Kehrseite des Glanzes.
Der Fluss ist, wie ihn diese Fotos darstellen, auch schön - und das ganz vordergründig und banal: Wie Lampions liegen und wippen die Lichter auf dem Wasser. Gursky hat die Fotos am Computer bearbeitet, nachgeschönt? Ihre Schönheit schärft ihren Schrecken. Nie war Gurskys Kunst der abstrakten Malerei- Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Ellsworth Kelly, auch Cy Twombly und Gerhard Richter - so nah.
Die „Bangkok“-Serie folgt den sechs „Ocean“-Bildern, die Gursky 2010 an die Grenzen des Darstellbaren führten: Mehr Welt, und das in quantitativem Sinn, als in diesen digital behandelten Satellitenbildern lässt sich auf einer Fotografie nicht erfassen. Auf einem von ihnen ragen Madagaskar, die Spitze der indischen Halbinsel, Sumatra und Westaustralien wie Fragmente in den riesigen, in vielen Tiefen blau ruhenden Ozean.“
Wer Andreas Gurskys Kunst begegnen will, muss sich ins Museum begeben. Im Katalog sind - nicht nur - die „Bangkok“-Fotos nicht groß genug, um ihren Charakter als Suchbilder ausspielen zu können und etwa die dümpelnden Abfallstücke erkennen zu lassen. Der Fotograf, der mit Aufnahmen von Jackson-Pollock-Bildern oder Ausschnitten aus Gemälden eines John Constable oder Vincent van Gogh die Malerei en detail reproduziert, verweigert sich der Reproduzierbarkeit:
Auch das ist ein Versuch Gurskys, der seine Bildfindungen digital „ausarbeitet und präzisiert“, sich von der klassischen Fotografie zu lösen und der Malerei anzunähern - als hätte sie sich nicht längst von ihr emanzipiert und es immer noch nötig, die Konkurrenz mit ihr aufzunehmen und ihren eigenen Kunstcharakter unter Beweis zu stellen."
Ich arbeite bereits seit 16 Jahren´auf diese Weise. Damals habe ich mein erstes großes Fotoprojekt "Bilder in Bäumen" / "Images in Trees" vorgestellt.

Hier folgen einige Videos von meiner Ausstellung „Alles im Fluss“ aus 2008:

"Vivid Colors and The Infinite Pictorial Space" by Paul Rolans - The Imagenist

Vivid Colors plays prismatic improvisations over the harmonies of the double rainbow
and creates The Infinite Pictorial Space and exciting new worlds in the optical spectrum of light.

 

I ´ve made this slideshow on the occasion of the exhibition "Im Farbenrausch" - Munch,Matisse und die Expressionisten, at the Folkwang Museum in Essen.

I would also like to refer to the exhibition  "Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today"
at the MoMa in New York in 2008.

Color Chart celebrates a paradox: the lush beauty that results when contemporary artists assign color decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual truth or scientific validity of particular colors gave way to an excitement about color as a mass-produced and standardized commercial product. The Romantic quest for personal expression instead became Andy Warhol's "I want to be a machine;" the artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella's "Straight out of the can; it can't get better than that." Color Chart is the first major exhibition devoted to this pivotal transformation, featuring work by some forty artists ranging from Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Richter to Sherrie Levine and Damien Hirst. (from the MoMa website)

Organized by Ann Temkin, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art

               

"Images in the Chairs" by Paul Rolans, an imagenistic reaction on "Man on the Chairs" by He Xiangyu

 

As I visited the Art Cologne this year, I saw the installation "Man on the Chairs" by He Xiangyu,who exhibited at the Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin Beijing. As an artist and specialist wood photographer with an eye for details, I was excited. I returned the next day with my camera and worked the whole afternoon. I found a universe of images, hidden in the chairs

HE XIANGYU | MAN ON THE CHAIRS

White Space Beijing & Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin Beijing

“Man on the Chairs”, a piece of recent work of young artist He Xiangyu, goes on his multiple attitudes and judgments to the “object” in his famous work “The Coca Cola Project” – there is not only the emphasis on life experience, but also the insight into social system, and the evaluation of the power of language after the form of the “object” changes. In this new piece, the ancient round wood aqueduct abandoned by Yunnan mountaineers is dismantled and reassembled into more than one hundred chairs by the artist, and these “everyday” objects which symbolize time and tradition will occupy the entire exhibition space. The artist will create a supernatural poetic space in the exhibition hall based on them, and there will be a dancer performing contextual body language on the chairs. At the meanwhile, the viewers, being personally on the scene, can step into the exhibition space and walk among the chairs and experience the highness of nature, the realization of life and the absurdity of the act, and further find out the current view in the work “Man on the Chairs” and its attention and introspection into “the state of being” beyond time and space. Here is some information about it Read more and even more
He Xiangyu ist einer der chinesischen Gastkünstler auf der ArtCologne 2012 in Köln. Mit seinen jungen Jahren ist er schon einer der gefragtesten chinesischen Künstler.

"Man on the Chairs", ist ein Teil der jüngsten Arbeiten des jungen Künstlers. Für dieses Kunstprojekt, „Man of chairs“, sammelte er Holzteile eines ehemaligen Wasserkanals und lies sie nach Peking bringen. Dort arbeitete er dieses Holz zu den charismatischen Stühlen um.
Selbstverständlich können die Betrachter des Kunstwerkes auch erfahren, was es heißt, auf diesen Stühlen zu sitzen. Sie können die Hoheit der Natur, die Erkenntnis des Lebens und die Absurdität der Handlung am eigenen Körper spüren und auf sich wirken lassen.
Seine Großprojekte basieren auf der Herstellung neuer Zusammenhänge durch die Wandlung von Materialien. Lesen Sie mehr

In Focus: The Tree at the J.Paul Getty Museum / „Images in Trees“ by Paul Rolans

Anlässlich der Ausstellung In Focus: The Tree im J.Paul Getty Museum, möchte ich hier auf meine Fotoserie „Images in Trees“ aufmerksam machen.
Schauen Sie auf  “Images in Trees” – Archive
Ich arbeite seit 1995 an dieser Serie. Ich fühle mich wie auf einer Entdeckungsreise, die noch lange nicht zu Ende ist und auf der ich immer feinere Details in Bäumen wahrnehme. Meine erste Ausstellung mit diesen Bildern hatte ich in 1996 in der Humboldt Universität in Berlin.

Alexander von Humboldt, der Bruder von Wilhelm, war auch ein Forscher und Entdecker und brachte viele Schätze von seiner fünfjährigen Entdeckungsreise durch Süd-Amerika mit zurück nach Deutschland.
Einige Beispiele aus meiner Fotoserie „Images in Trees“ finden Sie hier und hier
In 1996 I showed my pictures at the Photokina in Cologne here is an article in the Magazine Photopresse about it.
In 1997 I have had an exhibition at the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Bonn. Mrs.Angela Merkel held the opening speech at the vernissage. In the same year I have been commisioned by the Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forestry to participate in compiling a photowall on the theme „Forest/Wood“ for the EXPO 2000 in Hannover.
En 2001 j`ai exposé mes photos dans La Maison de la Nature et de la Foret (sous le Patronage de la Direction Générale des Ressources Naturelles et de l´Environnement du Ministère de la Région Wallone).Vous trouvez ici un text en francais.
For an Article by Mrs. Marlene Schnelle-Schneider (German Society of Photography) about „Images in Trees“ please Look here
Auf der Homepage von The J.Paul Getty Museum fand ich einen Text über die Ausstellung In Focus: The Tree und den Artikel „Finding the Grace in Trees“ von Francoise Reynaud ,Kuratorin für Fotografie im Musée de Carnavalet in Paris und Autor von dem Buch The Tree in Photographs.
Here are some outtakes from the two articles. For more please Look at http://www.getty.edu ( current exhibitions)

In Focus: The Tree
February 8–July 3, 2011 at the Getty Center
“For millennia the tree has been a symbol of life. Celebrated by most ancient civilizations, the tree has stood for the center of the cosmos and the origin of creation. Represented throughout art and literature, trees feature in the earliest photographs from the 1840s as well as in contemporary works today. This exhibition, drawn entirely from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection, presents a range of photographs that reveal various artistic responses to the perennial subject. Documenting primeval forests and cultivated nature, these images explore the tree in its many connotations—as a graphic form, an evocative emblem, and vital evidence of the natural world in which we live.”

„Finding the Grace in Trees”
by Françoise Reynaud”
„When I began to research tree photographs in the boxes of the collection for the new exhibition In Focus: The Tree, each image I selected spoke to me in a special way. At the time, I wasn’t thinking at all of an exhibition, I was simply conducting research to see how trees and photographers dialogued through the centuries—a very universal but also extremely personal dialogue between nature and humans.
Then, when it was decided that we would cremte a book and an exhibition from this work, my co-curator Anne Lyden, associate curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum, and I chose to emphasize how each photograph was able to convey a message. The images had to be expressions of beauty, strength, fragility, grace, grandeur, strangeness, utility, and so on. The relationship between the individual tree and the scene or the event depicted is what’s interesting to see and to understand. Each photo tells a unique story. Trees are sometimes so old; they have seen so much. Trees don’t wait for the photographer to be beautiful or expressive, they just are.Ranging from 19th-century works to contemporary pieces, the prints in the show are by both recognized and lesser-known artists. Among the photographers whose work is on view are Robert Adams, Eugène Atget, Simryn Gill, Gustave Le Gray, Myoung Ho Lee, Eliot Porter, Alfred Stieglitz, and William Henry Fox Talbot.

The most interesting thing in the exhibition to me is how all of the images do relate to each other—they have a dialogue. Photographers like trees because, very often, they make portraits of themselves while taking these pictures. But not always, of course! Sometimes it’s just a way of finding inspiration and beauty in nature. Some photographers are well known for making pictures of trees, like Carleton Watkins, Atget, or Adams. But sometimes the picture is an exception to their body of work, as with Man Ray, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, or Diane Arbus. It seems to me these exceptions mean something very personal: perhaps the tree embodies a feeling very present in the mind of the photographer, and somehow resonates with what they as a human are going through in their life. I like to think so.

„Visual artists as well as writers have long extolled the presence of the tree. From the origins of photography to the present day, photographers have considered the tree, with its strong graphic form and evocative power, to be a popular subject. Through the works of artists such as Robert Adams, Eugène Atget, Anne Brigman, William Eggleston, P. H. Emerson, Gustave Le Gray, Eliot Porter, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Carleton Watkins, this book spans the history of photography from the mid-nineteenth to early-twenty-first century to address the image of the tree in its many connotations—as graphic form, symbolic icon, and role model for the beauty of nature. The selection of eighty-one images carefully culled from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection of photographs and reproduced in color presents the tree in various contexts: the single tree; trees in the urban landscape; uses of trees; tree reflections and shadows; and details, abstractions, and conceptual views of trees as conceived by contemporary artists.„This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition In Focus: The Tree, to be held at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 15 to June 3, 2011.

Françoise Reynaud is curator of photographs at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris
The Tree in Photographs
Author: Françoise Reynaud
Year: 2010

"The Gerhard Richter Window" in the Cologne Cathedral - an imagenistic interpretation by Paul Rolans

                                                                                                                                                                

The new stained glass window,in the Cologne Cathedral, designed by Gerhard Richter has been unveiled to the public on Aug. 25 - 2007. I went to look at it quite a lot since that day. The best time to do that is when the sun shines through it. Then some of the Cahedral´s walls look as if they are painted in light and fabulous colours. It inspired me so much, that I had to make this artistic comment,this imagenistic interpretation, in which I transform the stained glass window with its 11.500 coloured squares into images, that resemble the abstract paintings of Gerhard Richter

"Colour in the light"

"Richter’s work is indifferent to interpretations. It doesn’t operate with a higher meaning that can be read out of it, nor does it require this. It is what it is: colour and light. And it manages quite well with these fundamental elements. They suffice to produce a celebratory harmony. The coloured glass squares are only mediators between the sunlight of changing times of the day and the light yielded by the radiant power of the sun that passes through the coloured material. The sunlight manifests itself as coloured inside the church. And as the living natural light changes, so too does the colour tone of the affected light. Sometimes, on bright days, the yellow tones dominate; sometimes, on overcast days, the dark blue tones. The window lives from living light as the source of all life. ‘The light of the sun’, says the Dean of the Cathedral Dr. Feldhoff, ‘is refracted by the panes into the colours of the world’.... read the whole article

 

Gerhard Richter Panorama

"Gerhard Richter, beyond a doubt the most famous German artist of his generation, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday on 9 February 2012. To mark the occasion, the New National Gallery in Berlin is holding a sweeping retrospective of his work, in conjunction with Tate Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris...." read more.

"Neptune in Water" as seen by Paul Rolans -The Imagenist

It was breathtaking as I saw Neptune, the mythological God of Water and the Sea in a litte river, that has its sources in the woods of Aachen. The name Aachen derives fron Ahha, which means "Water" in the Ancient Germanic language. Seeing Neptune in all his splendour, had a AHA! effect on me.
The first Image is one of the originals. As you´ll see it is just perfect.I didn´t need to change or edit a thing. I´ve made some variations of it in order to create this video.

Andreas Gursky “Rhine II” and “Images in the Rhine” by Paul Rolans

BBC News Entertainment & Arts
11 November 2011

Andreas Gursky's Rhein II sets photo record

“An image of the Rhine by German artist Andreas Gursky has fetched $4.3m (£2.7m) at Christie's New York, setting an auction record for a photograph.
Glass-mounted panoramic colour print Rhein II, created in 1999, is one of an edition of six works.
Others hang at New York's Museum of Modern Art and London's Tate Modern.

It beat the previous record of $3.9m (£2.5m) achieved by an untitled 1981 colour print by Cindy Sherman, who is the subject of all her own works.
Gursky's print had a pre-sale estimate of $2.5m-$3.5m (£1.6m-£2.2m).

Rhein II is the largest of the six photographs, which are produced in various sizes.

As well as in New York and London, other photographs in the edition are housed in Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne and Glenstone art museum in the US.
Gursky has spoken of "a particular place with a view over the Rhine which has somehow always fascinated me, but it didn't suffice for a picture as it basically constituted only part of a picture".
He said he "carried this idea for a picture around with me for a year-and-a-half".
"In the end I decided to digitalise the pictures and leave out the elements that bothered me," he added.

Christie's said the viewer was "not invited to consider a specific place along the river, but rather an almost 'platonic' ideal of the body of water as it navigates the landscape".

Here you can see the picture and read the original article.

In my photo series “Images in the Rhine” I show pictures, which I did not edit as extensively as Andreas Gursky did with his photo. I have perceived and then photographed them out of a special perspective on the river Rhine in Cologne (2010). .

Info about the video:
This is a video of a slideshow on my PC. It shows some footage from my new photo series "Images in the Rhine." I´m specialized in water-photography and I work since 2003 continuously at my photo project "Images in Water. I would like to draw attention of the viewer at a new facet of this wonderful and fascinating element with its inexhaustible imagery. Due to my trained eye and a carefully selected perspective, I succeed in discovering unique pictures in the swirls, waves and refractions in the water which I capture with my camera. To make these - Images in the Rhine- was a real challenge. When I started, I first saw just a shapeless mass of water, nearly monochromatic. I had to “tame” the river with eye in order to make those Images out of the variety of underwater structures. I am very impressed by the paintings of William Turner and Claude Monet, who have decades long occupied themselves with the element water. William Turner made many trips along the Rhine and made many sketches of it, that served as an inspiration for his paintings. He has made some beautiful views of the Rhine that show Cologne.

On your request,I create an exclusive photo edition for you with „Images in Water“, from a river of your choice.

The 65th Annual Conference of the German Forest Society and "Images in Trees" by Paul Rolans

At the 65^th Annual Conference of the German Forest Society in Aachen held from 21^st to 25^th September 2011, Jan McAlpine Director of the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat within DESA, was awarded the Fernow Award by the German Forest Society at a commemorative event on September 23, at the historic town hall of Aachen. The Fernow Award recognizes individuals for outstanding achievements in international forestry.
Ms. McAlpine was recognised for her extensive achievements over the last three years on behalf of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat, including, in particular, her accomplishments related to activities in celebration of the International Year of Forests, 2011. Read more .

I can identify with the slogan of this years` Conference :“Wir sind Wald” / “We are the Forest”. I´m working since 1995 at a photo-project, in which I show incredible images that I see in trees.In 1996 I´ve had an exhibition with it during the 57th Annual Conference of the German Forest Society at The Humboldt University in Berlin.I started with that project in Aachen and have extended it to the rest of Germany and some other European countries. I have named it “Images in Trees”. Here is a video that gives an impression of it.

On "Images in Trees" - Archive I have collected some Articles etc. Further information you´ll find on my homepage .

I sell photographs of my project in my webshop. If you appreciate my perception of trees or if you are looking for an exceptional present, I create an exclusive photo-edition for you of the Images in the Trees in your (palace)-garden, your park or your private-forest. Please contact me.

"Rembrandt in Water" as seen by Paul Rolans -The Imagenist

Here is a short video that I made at one of my exhibitions in 2008. It´s an exploration of a photo with the video-camera. The sunlight gives the Image a “golden” colour. Some visitors of the exhibition had associations with works from Rembrandt. It could be an abstract self-portrait. Rembrandt made a lot of them during his life. As I explored the Image with my camera, I discovered more little figures,which I will show in another video later on.

Images in Trees by Paul Rolans: In search of Colours Forms and Figures

In search of Colours Forms and Figures An introduction by Dr. Marlene Schnelle-Schneyder DGPh As a rule, photographers are always searching; searching for motifs and ideas. Paul Rolans has found his motif and his idea: trees. In recent decades we have come to appreciate that trees and forests fulfil vital live-giving functions in the rhythms and cycles of Nature. Paul Rolans knows these functions, he has forged an intimate relationship to Nature and especially to trees. In the literal sense of the word he is seeking to get close to them. The word tree tends to evoke an associative chain of images in our minds: the trunk and crown, perhaps the colour green. Yet by intensifying his exploration, Paul Rolans' photos avoid these superficial clicheés. His objective is to challenge our normal, selective perception which usually only registers general features. He sensitises the observer's perception with great subtlety. He guides and beguiles the observer into focussing on the closeness and clarity of detail, on the experience of visual touch. Paul Rolans' eyes scan every minute detail, and in the totality they seek and find the special. His camera elicits colour and form from the bark, detects faces and figures which become signs. When his searching gaze has found the form, he both extracts and abstracts from Nature's offerings. Paul Rolans transforms his discoveries into images; the colours, forms and figures emancipates themselves from their origins and become autonomous visual entities in their own right. Coloured surfaces, which appear so untypical for trees, surprise us by their intensity or by the interplay of their broken hues. Forms, structured by light, take on aggressive tips and edges, whilst others display a harmonious, organic structure. Dynamic lines and coloured gradients serve to galvanise the static image into motion. We are familiar with the human face from birth and our perception seems to have an innate preference for recognising human physiognomies and figures. Paul Rolans rekindles these instincts with suggestive lines and contours, highlights them in his photos, allowing the eye to fill in the gaps to complete the image. Faces appear over primordial landscapes, angels float above surfaces. Figures, forms and colours interact, captivating our attention and perception. Paul Rolans reveals to us a new kind of Nature! We discover our own modes of perception, geared as they are to identification and recognition in order to structure our environment. The photos presented by Paul Rolans take us beyond this function. In the process of recognition we discover the puzzling and the new. We see images which Nature only reveals on closer scrutiny and for this Paul Rolans deserves our gratitude. I started my photoproject "Images in Trees" in 1995. It is a work in progress In this video you get a first impression. Some articles from the press about my exhibitions you´ll find here In 2011 there has been an exhibition,"In Focus: The Tree" , at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles Here is a part of a text "Finding the Grace in Trees" from Francoise Reynaud, the curator of the exhibition. „Visual artists as well as writers have long extolled the presence of the tree. From the origins of photography to the present day, photographers have considered the tree, with its strong graphic form and evocative power, to be a popular subject. Through the works of artists such as Robert Adams, Eugène Atget, Anne Brigman, William Eggleston, P. H. Emerson, Gustave Le Gray, Eliot Porter, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Carleton Watkins, this book spans the history of photography from the mid-nineteenth to early-twenty-first century to address the image of the tree in its many connotations—as graphic form, symbolic icon, and role model for the beauty of nature. The selection of eighty-one images carefully culled from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection of photographs and reproduced in color presents the tree in various contexts: the single tree; trees in the urban landscape; uses of trees; tree reflections and shadows; and details, abstractions, and conceptual views of trees as conceived by contemporary artists.„This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition In Focus: The Tree, to be held at the J.Paul Getty Museum from February 15 to June 3, 2011.

“Keith Richards in Water” as seen by Paul Rolans –The Imagenist

I´m an artist and specialist water-photographer.Some time ago I found an Image in a river near Cologne that looked very familiar. I recognized Keith right away. I know the paintings and drawings that Ron Wood made of the members of the Rolling Stones. The picture you see in the video is a more abstract version of the ones he made of Keith.
I´m a Stones fan for over 4 decades and I learned to play guitar as I copied their songs. Since 20 years I ´m on an imagenistical journey with my camera and I keep finding the most extraordinary Images in Water. So here is Keith. I had fun experimenting a bit with the Image. Keep on rolling Keith !!