Fabian Schlusser: Conception and materiality

Terms like dynamics, processiveness and motion are characteristic for the
conceptual thrust espoused by the painter Fabian Schlusser, whose artistic
creations invariably focus on the inceptive progress of the picture
concerned. Fabian Schlusser wishes his works to be comprehended not as
finished, inviolable objects, but as a kind of membrane, which not only
permits, but actually encourages the osmotic exchange processes between the
artist and the object, between the various materials employed, and (not
least) between the observer and the work itself. Interactive permeation,
adumbration and interpretation, composition and de-composition, thus
spotlight the work's living, organic character.

The spectrum of working processes used ranges from painting in oils
(sometimes in conjunction with encaustic), or collages and de-collages plus
monotype printing processes combined with drawing and painting, all the way
through to thermal wax printing. These techniques are applied to a wide
variety of image carriers, like canvas, paper or wood; Fabian Schlusser
creates both large- or small-size one-off works and multi-sectioned or
serial compositions.

The compositional element of concentric circle fragments, recurring in
numerous early works, correlates with a painting process that attempts to
escape from any form of systemisation, in order to repeatedly re-examine,
enhance and accentuate the particular dynamics of the picture as it evolves.
The determinative theme of his more recent works, the broken line,
highlights to equal effect the fractures and the transitions in the
materials and techniques employed. In a symbolic sense, this indicator of
disjunction and coalescence emblematises the inherently disparate
representational duality of interior and exterior, front and rear, material
and substance, plus the picture itself, in which form and content are so
intermingled that they merge into indistinguishability.

Going beyond the mere pictorial representation or interpretation of single
ideas and intentions, Fabian Schlusser brings opposing tendencies into
communication with each other, so as thus to generate the perceptual
tensions able to trigger creative processes both in the artist himself and
in the observer. These tendencies are manifested in concepts of well-nigh
contradictory connotations, marrying fixed geometric principles of order to
dissolutive or fragmentational movements. Premeditation coupled with
simultaneous acceptance of the accidental, of what spontaneously occurs to
the artist/picture, a process that for Fabian Schlusser reflects the
quintessence of painting as such, and brings to the fore its fundamentally
alchemical character.

Prof. Dr. Beate Ochsner