"Zentralformen" from Robert Schaberl

Over the past few years Robert Schaberl has developed a series of paintings which are entiteled Zentralformen. These monochromatic pictures adress themselves directly to the nature of painting as a material practise, whilst avoiding the pitfalls of a reductive "minimalist" discourse. Rather than using this medium to create illusory space, Schaberl has opted to investigate the relationship that developes through the interaction of painting, light and viewer.

Whilst much contemporary painting finds itself in crisis, the rigorously condensed format of these works opens a rich realm of visual speculation. They do not refer out to, or represent objects in the world but, rather adress themselves to value. The material of these paintings is rigorously condensed so as to focus on their very substance, the hue and tonality of colour whose modulations are given value through the agency of light.

The Zentralformen re-assert the authencity of painting not as a narrative but as a connotative form; the dialogue on value embodied in the work proposes a correlation in other discourses.

©  Julien Robson 1995