Questions for Klaus Kehrwald | Klaus Kehrwald: Interiors | Kehrwalds Painting | Galerie Hengesbach | Attempt about Kehrwald

Question: There's always a tendency for camps to form in the visual arts. You swing between the representational and the abstract. Do you have any inhibitions?

KK: No, not at all. Not any more, anyway, because it always depends on your point of view. Objects can always just as easily be seen as abstractions. Even in representational painting, the dividing lines have long since blurred. That's the very essence of painting. What is shown is not really the thing itself, but a depiction of it. Just think of Magritte: Ceci n’est pas une pipe. The representation of a pipe is not a pipe. Taken this way, I think the division into abstract and representational is nonsense. It doesn't get me anywhere any more. Above all, painting is the application of pigments in a bonding agent to a substrate - a technical term. Everything else is just ideology.

Question: Are you an ideologue?
KK: No. I'm a painter!

Question: You paint churches. Are you religious?
KK: Not really - not in principle. But art is a special form of religious expression. And churches are a form intended to convey content - an attempt to get on familiar terms with things like eternity and truthfulness, etcetera, and to explore subjective possibilities .

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