| Nicholas Weist: Till, the narratives of your paintings are generally scenes of vague horror, dystopia, or pop culture gone brutally wrong. Do you feel you paint from life, or is it more of a forecast, a forewarning? Till Gerhard: I would say that I certainly do paint from life, as a lot of my source material is based on photographs—often my own photos taken in daily life. I also think that photography is still considered a medium that reproduces facts from real life. But turning it into a painting it becomes more of a borderline walk. The paintings always contain the possibility of beauty and the abyss, showing how thin the ice that we walk on actually is. |
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Till Gerhard talks to Nicholas Weist
Nicholas Weist is an editor-at-large for NY Arts and Till Gerhard is a painter based in Hamburg. His solo exhibition at Gallerie Loyal, Mansion on the Hill, will be on view from December 6 to January 12. Zardoz is a 1974 film starring Sean Connery as Zed, a barbarian from the future who enters a highly refined civilization of immortal beings led by an all-knowing computer called The Tabernacle.
Nicholas Weist: Till, the narratives of your paintings are generally scenes of vague horror, dystopia, or pop culture gone brutally wrong. Do you feel you paint from life, or is it more of a forecast, a forewarning?
Till Gerhard: I would say that I certainly do paint from life, as a lot of my source material is based on photographs—often my own photos taken in daily life. I also think that photography is still considered a medium that reproduces facts from real life. But turning it into a painting it becomes more of a borderline walk. The paintings always contain the possibility of beauty and the abyss, showing how thin the ice that we walk on actually is.
NW: You share that sensibility with some classic cinema: I’m thinking of Last House on the Left, Poltergeist, The Wicker Man, the list goes on.
TG: I would say that cinema in general has a major influence on my work. On the one hand I think I share a coming-of-age experience with my generation: to have grown up watching a lot of movies, especially scary and horror movies as well as classic movies from the 60s and 70s. As a teenager I watched films like Evil Dead, Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Dawn of the Dead for cheap thrills and what psychoanalysis would call "angstlust."
This became an unconscious humus that probably has had an influence on my work. I think that we in Western societies in general are enormously influenced by TV, films, and virtual realities. For example when people happen to witness big disasters, their first emotion is often the feeling of being in a Hollywood movie…until the awareness of reality sets in. This, what I would call "cinematic viewing," is very internalized—for me working with pictures and photos always evokes scenes in films.
On the other hand I am a big fan of cinema and therefore I sometimes make very conscious decisions to reference or pay tribute to a particular film. Films that have directly influenced me, and which I would also consider as some of my favorites, are The Birds, Apocalypse Now, Zabriskie Point, Blow Up, The Shining, Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Zardoz, Mad Max, and yes, last but not least The Wicker Man (which still is quite unknown in Germany).
NW: Zardoz is an incredible film. Sean Connery’s greatest I think. I’m interested in how your paintings’ structures correspond to those of films, but where a viewer looks at a film (the gaze is in one direction only), in your paintings one gets the sense that there is something looking back.
TG: I think Zardoz was the most insane, LSD-driven attempt to include every myth and idea about life, death, wisdom, knowledge, past, future, violence, and love into one plot—which makes it a little hard to follow the story…
When you say the paintings seem to look back, which some literally do, that’s the best thing that can happen, because it means that something like a dialogue has started. The painting mirrors your questions and maybe even drives them in a new direction. I like the idea of painting being a mirror that reflects everything that you as the viewer bring along. It cannot answer questions like The Tabernacle in Zardoz, but at least it can start a process of thinking. Every viewer has his own background with which he will confront the painting; I have to admit that often the paintings are cleverer than I am, because they can reflect things that I didn’t intend.
NW: If you could ask The Tabernacle one question, what would it be?
TG: Is it getting better or worse?
NW: [Booming Voice] DEFINITELY WORSE! WHAT SAY YOU?
TG: Ok, so The Times They Are A-Changin’. Just Let It Be and Be Here Now.
