MARTIN DISLER
Cloudy Totem
January 22 to March 5, 2022
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Photos © Patxi Bergé
Theatre of Survival
Martin Disler – the late Years
In the period spanning from 1980 to beyond the middle of the decade, Martin Disler was an internationally acclaimed painter and enjoyed a certain star status. The years 1986-88 were then to become a phase of upheaval; what the produced immediately prior to 1988, that is, before his conscious retreat from the hectic, overheated art market of that time into seclusion, demonstrates an incredible and excessively driven creative energy. […] The transitional phase of the mid-1980s lasted just over two years, during which time he moved (in late 1985) from Paris to Samedan in Upper Engadin; had longer residencies in Milan and Lugano; and finally in 1988 relocated, together with his wife, to the hamlet of Les Planchettes in French-speaking Jura, secluded from the world–and above all, from the art world. Disler was working at that time with incredible energy at the almost limitless variety of hist artistic expression. In addition to painting, he concentrated heavily on the sculptural work begun in 1985, produced many watercolors and, in collaboration with the Zurich copperplate printer, Peter Kneubühler, also an extremely extensive range of prints. Added to this, he carried out an intense and enthusiastic activity with the newly discovered possibilities of monotype. […]
In 1988, Irene Grundel and Martin Disler acquired the last house on a road extending into the outskirts of the remote Jura village of Les Planchettes and extended it with two studios. Here, in a variation of the monotype technique, Disler discovered the possibility of creating pictures through a ductile gesture, that is, blindly drawing into the back o the thin paper as it lay face down on the wet paint. The potential of using touch to etch the drawing into the thin Japanese paper from the „wrong“ side truly fascinated him, and in a short time he had produced a substantial quantity of work. […] During the 1990s, Disler devoted himself to this medium with joy and curiosity, the small works often being produced on the kitchen table. In 1995, he created a final elaborate, large-format series with large single figures in narrow, vertical orientation. In a text written specifically on the monotypes, but which is also instructive for his whole concept of art, Disler described the very sensual and erotic quality of this creative process in this sensitive medium with suitably sensual words: „This kind of monotype is created by placing paper on a surface covered in paint from a roller, which he touches tenderly but with gentle emphasis, like a skilled lover, who has learned to send long, unencrypted messages with his hands into his beloved’s body by Morse code or telegraph … The first touch is the loveliest, whether he starts between the delicate thighs or in the middle of the knoll of a breast or on the edge of an opening recess.“ […]
As interest in his painting in the years 1986-88 waned, Martin Disler shared the fate of many other painters who had been launched, exhibited and marketed in the eighties as Neue Wilde–i.e., New Fauves or neo-expressionists. In those years, his work might have exerted a more favorable impression on many young painters, particularly in Switzerland, had he not been repeatedly associated with this movement and its violent imagery; had it been more obvious that he had basically always been a loner. Certainly his subject matter also prevailed with German representatives of „wild“ painting or neo-expressionism, but there was a crucial difference in Disler’s attitude: irony and cynicism were absolutely alien to the self-taught artist who had never attended art school. […]
Disler’s pictures include their inhabitants, meaning they are integrated. Physicality is already established in the way they are made. Analogously to digging with his fingers while sculpting, this oil painting „happened“ primarily … physically with his fingers. Disler mainly used his upper arm as a palette, where he mixed the colors. From the first layer of oil paint, he did not stop. Scratching with fingernails or the tip of a knife, really cutting away with the knife Disler loved so much, then back to delicate touches by hand, digging and smoothing with a spatula, which could expose the painting beneath, finally a layer of relatively liquid oil paint over the largely dried up, furrowed, painted surface: these were both aggressive and tender enhancements as time passed. They were executed in tense alertness and calm at the same time. (Description: Dieter Koepplin, Gross und klein, expansiv und intim, in: Martin Disler 1949–1996, Zurich/Aarau 2007)
– Beat Wismer
Excerpts from: Beat Wismer, Theater des Überlebens, Martin Disler – die späten Jahre, in exhibition catalogue Davos 2021.
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MARTIN DISLER
Cloudy Totem
January 22 to March 5, 2022
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Theatre of Survival
Martin Disler – the late Years
In the period spanning from 1980 to beyond the middle of the decade, Martin Disler was an internationally acclaimed painter and enjoyed a certain star status. The years 1986-88 were then to become a phase of upheaval; what the produced immediately prior to 1988, that is, before his conscious retreat from the hectic, overheated art market of that time into seclusion, demonstrates an incredible and excessively driven creative energy. […] The transitional phase of the mid-1980s lasted just over two years, during which time he moved (in late 1985) from Paris to Samedan in Upper Engadin; had longer residencies in Milan and Lugano; and finally in 1988 relocated, together with his wife, to the hamlet of Les Planchettes in French-speaking Jura, secluded from the world–and above all, from the art world. Disler was working at that time with incredible energy at the almost limitless variety of hist artistic expression. In addition to painting, he concentrated heavily on the sculptural work begun in 1985, produced many watercolors and, in collaboration with the Zurich copperplate printer, Peter Kneubühler, also an extremely extensive range of prints. Added to this, he carried out an intense and enthusiastic activity with the newly discovered possibilities of monotype. […]
In 1988, Irene Grundel and Martin Disler acquired the last house on a road extending into the outskirts of the remote Jura village of Les Planchettes and extended it with two studios. Here, in a variation of the monotype technique, Disler discovered the possibility of creating pictures through a ductile gesture, that is, blindly drawing into the back o the thin paper as it lay face down on the wet paint. The potential of using touch to etch the drawing into the thin Japanese paper from the „wrong“ side truly fascinated him, and in a short time he had produced a substantial quantity of work. […] During the 1990s, Disler devoted himself to this medium with joy and curiosity, the small works often being produced on the kitchen table. In 1995, he created a final elaborate, large-format series with large single figures in narrow, vertical orientation. In a text written specifically on the monotypes, but which is also instructive for his whole concept of art, Disler described the very sensual and erotic quality of this creative process in this sensitive medium with suitably sensual words: „This kind of monotype is created by placing paper on a surface covered in paint from a roller, which he touches tenderly but with gentle emphasis, like a skilled lover, who has learned to send long, unencrypted messages with his hands into his beloved’s body by Morse code or telegraph … The first touch is the loveliest, whether he starts between the delicate thighs or in the middle of the knoll of a breast or on the edge of an opening recess.“ […]
As interest in his painting in the years 1986-88 waned, Martin Disler shared the fate of many other painters who had been launched, exhibited and marketed in the eighties as Neue Wilde–i.e., New Fauves or neo-expressionists. In those years, his work might have exerted a more favorable impression on many young painters, particularly in Switzerland, had he not been repeatedly associated with this movement and its violent imagery; had it been more obvious that he had basically always been a loner. Certainly his subject matter also prevailed with German representatives of „wild“ painting or neo-expressionism, but there was a crucial difference in Disler’s attitude: irony and cynicism were absolutely alien to the self-taught artist who had never attended art school. […]
Disler’s pictures include their inhabitants, meaning they are integrated. Physicality is already established in the way they are made. Analogously to digging with his fingers while sculpting, this oil painting „happened“ primarily … physically with his fingers. Disler mainly used his upper arm as a palette, where he mixed the colors. From the first layer of oil paint, he did not stop. Scratching with fingernails or the tip of a knife, really cutting away with the knife Disler loved so much, then back to delicate touches by hand, digging and smoothing with a spatula, which could expose the painting beneath, finally a layer of relatively liquid oil paint over the largely dried up, furrowed, painted surface: these were both aggressive and tender enhancements as time passed. They were executed in tense alertness and calm at the same time. (Description: Dieter Koepplin, Gross und klein, expansiv und intim, in: Martin Disler 1949–1996, Zurich/Aarau 2007)
– Beat Wismer
Excerpts from: Beat Wismer, Theater des Überlebens, Martin Disler – die späten Jahre, in exhibition catalogue Davos 2021.
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