Dancing with the Squeegee

Published by Nurit Schaller in: diletto – the paper on art & culture, issue 3/1-2012
Markus Gottfried 2012

The development process of my series of prints and drawings is always based on the impression or invention of a primary abstract shape. A basic module that is reduced to the essence of formal trait, as individual and as versatile as possible at once. When this module gets its name, a name that also entitles the whole series, it starts to live, it begins to play. The primary shape starts a kind of an abstract dance interacting with itself and always generating new configurations of appealing attraction. My effort is to keep this interaction boiling and to focus on detecting the most enthralling constellations, to select the punchiest film stills of this constant movement. This dance still continues with various arrangements of the finished pictures on the wall. I’m the choreographer of this dance, but it greatly depends on the personality of the primary shape, if the dance can develop inspiringly or not.

I usually start with drawings, to learn something about the options a new module offers, to get a feeling for its scope. But actually drawings and prints develop in an associated process, they affect each other. Ideas for prints sprout from the drawing and some prints lead to new drawings. Both techniques have their own characteristics and afford different compositions. They are different but of equal relevance. Drawing in a way permits works that are more light weight, more essential or concentrated on basic questions. Screen printing on the other hand offers this great suitability for printing even the brightest colors in an amazing range of opacity.

To me there isn’t any difference between screen printing and painting when I do my pictures. I use a graphic arts technique, but I act like painting, when I’m printing. Usually I never produce editions but unique prints, just employing the squeegee as a kind of brush but not as a means of reproduction. My prints arise while I’m printing, spontaneously, without a given conception for the single leaf. They are composed in a status of complete concentration on both, the conditions of the printing procedure as well as the strain of creating. I have to permanently keep an eye on the technical requirements to achieve prints of quality. As I’m doing unique items I especially try to avoid misprints of course. But simultaneously I also have to decide accurately where to print the next shape, if I lose too much time with this, the next print would fail. This kind of stress, this experience of forgetting about the rest and just breathing with the new pictures giving birth to them is magic.

From the series » Daedong «  silkscreen unique prints on paper, 29x38cm, 2010

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