From Energy Core to the Light, New Pictures by Helmut Schober.

Light is the basis of all seeing and enlightenment. For art it is at once a medium and a motif. However, an overabundance of light can also cancel itself out, blurring and disintegrating outlines. As long ago as 1954, one art historian, Wolfgang Schöne, distinguished between “luminosity” – something self-sufficient which radiates outwards – and “illuminating light” – the kind that falls on something from the outside. Between the kind of light that is, in itself, luminous and a light source that defines bodies and penetrates space. The latter casts shadows and allows us to apprehend the world with our eyes.

Für Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart VI, 1977

Anybody wanting to understand Helmut Schober’s pictures must appreciate their light. Something that may be helpful here is to place them in the context of the history of art. It soon becomes apparent that Schöne’s classic division into two categories does not cover all aspects of this light. Indeed, it is neither supernatural such as – to quote a typical example – medieval gold grounds, nor does it shape earthly bodies or illuminate earthly spheres the way that painting has done since the early Renaissance. It is a light comprehensive enough to defy any conventional classification. Even the kinds of approaches that see it as part of a cosmogonic or cosmic process miss its diversity, ending up getting caught up in misunderstandings of external analogies.

Does the secret of this light lie in its symbiosis with darkness? In its approach to gloom? Artists such as Californian “light-cosmic” James Turrell and Zero Group enthusiast Heinz Mack merge the spiritual aspect of light with its materiality, surrendering their firm footing in painting. Schober, by contrast, investigates light’s genesis and how it is extinguished, its ebb and flow, its boundaries, with the assistance of black lead and colored pigments. Since the mid-1980s at the latest, his painting and graphic work have revolved around this primal force of nature, around the fundamental energy governing life in general and painting in particular. And, if you allow me a moment of hyperbolic insistence, this work is an artistic apotheosis of light’s manifold diversity of guises as the archetypal epitome of coming into being and dying away.

Between the opposites of light and dark exists a rich palette of different nuances, all manner of ways of expressing light whose filaments penetrate the night and which is yet, as its counterpart, dependent on the latter. And wherever this shaping by the light (or of the light?) ends, an un-shaping process by the blackness of the opposite phenomenon, of darkness, starts. These illumination effects take place as a transition between the two worlds which, in their extreme forms, range from swathes of light that have been torn open all the way to deep obfuscation. Schober paints this transitory world with its shifts in emphasis. For him, it is the only subject matter and in his paintings the guiding energy that is light takes absolute precedence. He divests it of its subordinate role in the service of illusion, empowering it as few artists have done before.

I can think of almost nobody who is adept at causing light to glint and fade, glow and drain away, shimmer and pale in so many different ways and so autonomously. Here, the fundamental distinction between luminous and illuminating light no longer applies. Light is neither the final instance nor is it the victor over the night. It is much more likely that it is very suddenly in evidence or takes the form of a gradual, continuous emanation. The darkness is, in equal measure, its counterpart and its partner. The two complement each other.

Things were different when, three decades ago, myriads of blazing light were still fiercely fighting their way to the fore. To begin with, lively combatants joined the fray. Columns of fire, tokens from heaven and flashes of lightning rent the night like sudden raids. These abrupt interventions subverted the softer moments of impact. In those days, at the root of Schober’s work was a dualistic, almost Manichaean notion. Nevertheless, there were never any metaphysical connotations here, either. This ruled out any biblical, mythological parallels.

At the same time, throughout all phases of Schober’s work light leads an existence unfettered by shadows. The latter’s ancillary services are not required for his bodies and cubes. The special position occupied by Schober’s light painting is visible, not least, in its refusal to fit in with current categories in art history.

Despite taking great precautions against being misunderstood, the artist takes his orientation – in illustrative terms – from real solar radiation, real rivers of magma and starry scenarios, after all, the stars in the heavens in the daytime and nighttime frequently evoke associations. The sun and the moon affect the chromaticity of the pictures, with all the resultant effects on the range of colors to be found in them. Everything from warmth to burning heat and from cold to graduated hues (unintentionally?) bring to mind their cosmic counterparts. An encircled glow or a radiant, sometimes even covered core particularly underscores the thermic quality of the colors yellow/red. However, in recent times the focus has also been more and more decisively on graduations and sophisticated transitions. The colors of night infiltrate the yellow/red sections, acquiring a wealth of nuances in the process.

Other hints are flecks of cloud and, more than anything else, island-like topographies viewed from above, dissected archipelagoes rich in bays or scattered atolls. However, the latter’s appearance changes to naturalism and illusion as little as it does to the sun and the moon. In other words, Schober is as little inclined to paint supernovas and meteorites as he is to depict volcanic arcs from a great height or banks of cloud in the pale moonlight. He paints everything from the intensity of pure light to traces of the latter and the way it is reflected in an indeterminate night.

Schober is as unwilling to talk about the methods he uses as a medieval master would have been to disclose the secrets of his workshop. In his opinion, such things are an aspect of his painting technique and have only a secondary bearing on his art. However, he does reveal that this luminosity, this light source hidden in his pictures is related to their pigment content and the way he uses it. Instead of applying lighter and lighter paints in the final stage of painting (that then “stand out”, so to speak, or project slightly) he mixes crystal grains into the top coat. This means that the outer “skin” presents itself to the viewer with tiny prisms. Mini reflectors invert the incident light, producing a vibrant aura. Doubtless, this is a subtle approach to granulate material and not a patent recipe. However, the process shows that, to paraphrase the famous words of Paul Klee, Schober’s light does not take its lead from physics, but, in part, comes into being in accordance with the laws of physics.

So much on the principles by which Schober builds up his work. Now, for the previous cycle Lumen, Peter Anselm Riedl defined two poles. According to him, they run the gamut from a warm core with a central position to a decentralized brightness in front of flecks and stripes spreading out like a landscape. The new pictures also boast a similar kind of tension. Nevertheless, these extend beyond the range of the older cycle. Without doubt, the associations are still with the sun and the moon standing on the most distant horizon. Certainly, as in the artist’s entire painting oeuvre since 1981, these new works also take their inspiration from the changing drama between light and darkness. And doubtless Schober continues to develop the visible framework of this drama by charging it with “feelings and ever new ways of triggering our imagination” (Riedl).

However, over the course of the years, the rhythm of this permeation, of these fluctuating movements, has changed. Whereas two decades ago fireballs with frayed edges were still converging in vortices of energy and even five years ago surfaces were still breaking apart like overly dry networks before expanding in porous interdependencies, this fragmented turmoil has now been laid to rest. Schober’s shapes have now become larger, they are less structured and protracted rhythms sweep over entire pictures. Tensions no longer rend the surfaces, there is less structure and expanses stretch out in a gradual diffusion.

Both the “yellow/red” and the “blue” pictures have been undergoing this development for a good ten years now. In the past, it was hardly ever the case that there was so much space around the dominant light or glowing phenomenon. The light source confronting its darker environment was seldom so restrained or contained. Before 2010 nowhere did the nuances of crepuscular light so decisively replace bursting explosions of brightness. In extreme cases, an arc of light retreats to the periphery, draining away in gentle graduations. Nuanced shapes are now becoming more essential than the garish “discharges” and “vibrations” of earlier years. Even the expanses of island worlds are grouped around a circular core or adapt themselves to their dusky environments.

What becomes apparent in every single picture as a kind of deceleration is also true of the relationship between the pictures. Even without knowledge of the exact sequence in which they were produced it is noticeable how closely linked particular compositional patterns are. Within certain series of motifs there are only slight differences between the individual pictures. For Schober, the discovery of slowness occurs in uninterrupted continuity. Nevertheless, the last six years summarized in the book under consideration still rely on the polar arrangement detected by Riedl. The one pole occupies a central position, the other a decentralized one.

Energy cores are part of the standard repertoire of Schober’s work. Forty years ago, when he was still expressing himself in performances, he recorded a shining white neon axis on his body and continued this along the floor as a central line. The vortex, another archetypical feature of his early work, expressed this concentrated eddying as the metaphor of a maelstrom. After his definitive return to painting in the late 1980s the energy he expresses was rounded into balls of heat and into melting processes. These caused the entire picture to glow before ebbing away as they distanced themselves further and further from the center. It is from these that the fiery circles as of 2006 take their lead, circles which again provide the composition with a red-hot center and offer a focus of attention.

This is the maxim of a number of pictures with their circles boasting almost glowing centers. These can be the most intensive of lights or back light, an innermost concentration or an external aura, depending on whether the shape in question casts light or covers it. The surroundings weave the grainy pigmentation into searing crepuscules, sometimes displaying bold distributions of warm and cold colors.

The other pattern takes advantage of the freedoms offered by asymmetry and irregular positioning. This pattern also reaches beyond the beginnings of this century, approximating to memories of landscapes rather than arrangements around a center. The artist appears to be gazing down on a world in tatters, one divided up into many entities. Drifting insular topographies tower up out of flooded areas like mountain ranges. Tongues of land stretch out into the distance, long fingers crooking into the void. They carry with them swathes of light consisting of the finest of granulates.

There are pictures dating from 2007–08 in which the delicate impressions of tire tracks appear to have been traced through the desert sand. These reinforce the landscape element, not only because of their earthly materiality, but also because of their kinetic vibrations, reminiscent of horizontal movements. The pictures from the beginning of the second decade are infused with sensitively palpable bas-reliefs of curving foothills or with minute structures of pigment. Sometimes, Schober scratches off certain parts revealing the lighter, yellow or white undercoat. The light is left to the pure color, returning to the surface without dulling.

Chain of islands stretching out like fingers, spurs of reefs strung together like links and asymmetrically networked contours of dunes are joined by isolated, sharply lancet-shaped transverse seams which, where light provides them with sharp edges, drop steeply – all these are far removed from the violent dramas need out of showers of light and glowing heat in the preceding cycles.

It is only now that unnecessarily strong radiation and the processes of heating up to melting point completely lose their immensely tense quality. Extreme concentrations of light and heat are replaced by a new calmness, even a relaxed feel. Produced in 2013, Schober’s latest pictures do not focus on the battles between loud brightness and night. They avoid the suddenness of a rupture, indeed anything sudden or abrupt. Concrete structures sweep into one another just as color graduations fade into one another.

As careful as we must be here with analogies, these wide expanses, often executed in searing red or cool blue, are reminiscent of the kind of skies that are made up of landscapes of clouds and yet also contain terrestrial topographies. Where streaks and concentrations of lines occur they are repeatedly stabilized by a restrained geometry. They carry on along their narrow paths, at one point they even come together to form what looks like a right angle. At other points lance-like points meet bubbles of hovering light.

Schober’s painting has achieved a paper-thin, breathing transparency whilst remaining phenomenally natural. At this stage it refuses to surrender to emotional or sensory excesses. The light spreads out very calmly, it is rounded and mild, neither dazzling nor burning. Instead, it develops that quiet glow described by the poets of the night before they start dreaming.

However, Schober does not resort to sentimental mood painting. The weapon-like precision of his sprinkling alone assures his acerbic tone. Schober, that encyclopedic luminary, has now also discovered this path over the course of which his motif and medium give way to contemplation.