The sensitivity of the painting machine

Hans-Jürgen Freund

The Gallery Art Virus presented Hans-Jürgen Freund, who impressed visitors with a miniature version of his mechanical painting machine. The sensitivity, i.e. the connection between feelings and the machine, causes one to stop and think. After all, in this technological age, one does associate the concept “machine” with soulless perfection, meticulous accuracy, norms, stereotypes: the precise opposite of artistic freedom and individual creativity. But the pictures in this exhibition do not give the slightest impression of having been mass produced. It is true that dots and lines are the predominant artistic leitmotifs, but the thematic arc is widely spanned, stretching from figurative associations via the gestural to colour-field painting. The impasto is juxtaposed with the transparent, pictorial worlds of immense plasticity emerge from the many layers of paint.