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"Epiphanies",
Analysis of Hitchcock's "Rear Window"

Solo Exhibition at the galerieXprssns, Hamburg, December 2004 until February 2005






Each: acryl on canvas, various measures from 73cm x 130cm up to 180cm x 300cm, with a proportion of "16 to 9", 2004


Official press-release for the solo exhibition at the galerieXprssns on December ,17th. 2005

The epiphane in Wlodek Bzowka's paintings, by Anna Grosskopf


The Irish writer James Joyce transferred the concept of epiphany from the Christian doctrine of salvation into the context of art. Since the Hellenistic time the concept of epiphany signified sudden and only momentary appearances of a divinity. Joyce started to use it as a description of aesthetical phenomena, in which global and religious components appear together. Joyce defines the concept of epiphany as "abrupt mental / intellectual manifestation", in which a person's (object's) inner nature / character sudden enlightens and one moment later disappears.

In the wake of Joyce the concept of epiphany found a common entrance into discussions of literature and art. Particularly Theodor W. Adorno accentuated an epiphane character in 20th century arts, that took over a lot of religious functions. From Adorno's point of view every artwork is an epiphany, "for there appears in every artwork something, that is not (does not exist)." In recent years the discussion of epiphany in the art context concentrated consequently and resulted in an aesthetic of appearance, which found its main theorist in Martin Seel.

Works of art contain the act of appearing ever since their beginning. The main characteristic of epiphany is a quality, which all aesthetical objects share, for the staging of their appearance is ever thwarted by their tendency of absconding from the spectator's analytic access. An artwork is always the unknown, the not-subsumable, that defies a hermeneutic appropriation.

In Wlodek Bzowka's paintings the artwork becomes acute as an "incarnate epiphane" (Adorno) in a particular way. At first glance we assume to have monochrome paintings in front of us. But the longer we immerse in this oscillating continuum of the monochrome space of colors, the more the motives in the canvases begin to emerge / to come forward until they completely dominate our gace.

Reinforced by the very special method of color application, Wlodek Bzowka developed, and by the changing incidence of light emerges an alternating Moment in our apperception:

Have we been sure about the objects of / in the image a moment earlier, a moment later they seem to retread and to slide back into the space of color on / in the surface of the canvas.

The dialectic movement between presentation and retread, between showing and hiding too finds its analogy in the field of the decision for motives for the canvases: Based on Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie "Rear Window" from 1954 Wlodek Bzowka examines psychological and medial aspects of the gace / the spectator's gace: How is the gace in painted and animated (moving) images staged? How do works of art deal with the spectator's view? And finaly, where do we draw the line between spectator and voyeur? "What we see is looking at us." (Didi-Huberman) - The image does not appear as a visual absolute term / constant anymore, which is regarded by the spectator's gace in an act of appropriation. In particular, it is the epiphane, retreating and ephemeral aspect / character of Wlodek Bzowka's paintings, which makes it possible to recognize at all times new dimensions of visuality.

(Anna Grosskopf)











Each: acryl on canvas, various measures from 51cm x 90cm up to 90cm x 160cm, with a proportion of "16 to 9", 2004
Extracts from Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Lenger's inaugural address on the occasion of the opening of Wlodek Bzowka's first solo exhibition

17th of December 2005 at the galerieXprssns, Hamburg


If there already exists the movie, why should artists continue painting? What are all the attempts, to set something on the canvas in motion, by using a painter's instruments for? Something that already forewent within the moved-image of movies? (...)

(...) Such questions do not concern only Wlodek Bzowka's paintings, which you can see in this exhibition. They concern general problems and their nature / kind is a medial one. What kind of status does painting have, which gets its conditions from movies, TV and computers? Or as well: What kind of policy of apperception could painting use under such conditions? (...)

(...) For example: this exhibition shows on canvases different calibrations of the movie, as they were also seen in Hitchcock's movie. But that is not just a bare doubling. It also does not deprive the movement of the moved-image. In fact, it has the images emerge from an order / arrangement, that foregoes the image as a virtual one. This process evokes other movements. "In the spectator's head?" (...)

(...) Within this short span of time, while [the spectator's] vision constitutes figures [on and] from the monochrome surfaces, a moment of un-decidability occurs. Vision blocks itself, to become definite. Vision runs through a lot of connections and is also constituted by them. It is comparable to an awakening, which is neither dream nor apperception of an apparent "reality". The "mental image" [(Gille Deleuze)] experiences the constitutive power of "Virtuality" [(Henri Bergson)]. The paintings of this exhibition play with or within this span of time. Couldn't this give us a possible answer to the first question: If the movie already exisxts, why should artists continue painting? (...)

Certainly, bad artists or bad observers could accuse them (the paintings) of arising too precisely from an archaeology of the eye and the view, from the concept of the moved-image and mental relations. At least too precisely for an artist. But where is it written, that artists could not think / conceptualize, or furthermore should not do so beyond their "craft"? Or where is it written, that artists should not be "researchers" within the never ending field of apperception?