Lightpainting overhead projector performance
Datum
The paintings of johann franki alias frank olsowski
He himself describes his early works as sequences of pictures in which he paints several sheets in direct succession, thus creating a flowing movement between the pictures. He would prefer his paintings to remain fluid.
Quick watercolor is his technique of choice, to which he has remained faithful to this day. Even though the later works are larger and the canvas will hold strong acrylic, varnish and oil, the ground in the most recent works still consists of watercolor surfaces that find canyons and windows between the pasty application of paint.
Cartoons, serial photography, film, video and computer animation offer a combination of painting and movement, all techniques that he tries out, but johann franki first finds what he is looking for with the overhead projector.
In order to enjoy his live painting himself, he learns to paint everything upside down and inside out, while the projection is created „right side up“ on its projection surface. He first illustrates to recorded music, then with a DJ and finally he brings in musicians, sound designers and singers for his performances. He creates rhythm and movement with his colors, which inspire the guest artists and allows them to animate him. The focus is on the dynamics of the visual event, but this does not always have to be the case. johann franki has found very different formats with the overhead projector. As an installation, live imaging for stories, or improvisational formats with other artists.
„When I was able to buy an overhead projector cheaply for the first time in 1983, I had more in mind than making enlargements with it. That’s exactly what the overhead projector isn’t particularly suitable for – a slide projector simply does a better job. But my idea was to do live paintings on buildings. But there were only felt-tip pens and unhealthy edding paints, which also messed up my brushes. I looked for artists who had perhaps been working with them for a long time, but there were only the variations from the flower power era, formerly with slide projectors, liquid paint sludge on an oil and water base, then becomes bubbly, displaces itself when you put a film on it, etc. Yawn.
That was too little. In Trajanstrasse in Cologne in 1985, I had a room on the ground floor with a large window facing the street. Here I used to draw pictures on my white walls with water-soluble projector felt-tip pens and a crowd of people from the pub opposite kept forming in front of my window to watch me.
It took me another 4 years to find suitable colors, liquid crystal in carrier soups, home-cooked, fantastically brilliant. It wasn’t until 1991 that I did the first announced official projector performance on the former Cologne Federal Railway Repair Works site in Nippes under the title „HighHeelBombs Projections against Hall Gates“. In the vault of the Ziehm family, Hamburgerstrasse, in the Rhenania with the Intermissonorchestra, up to the art places in the Bergischen, solo, with musicians, dancers, or performers. In 1996 I was broke and had to provide for a young family with a child. That took 10 years. In 2005, I did a public performance again for the first time as part of the exhibition „üppige Asceticism“ in the Cologne fire station. It was wonderful, it touched people. Surprisingly, this medium had still not caught on during my absence, many, perhaps all (of the 50 or so spectators) had never seen anything like it. But there are actually other places where the overhead projector has made inroads. For example, there was a festival in Copenhagen in October 2005 and there is a group in Vienna that even produces TV productions, broadcast on Bayern3. Finally. I wouldn’t be indifferent if someone claimed to be the inventor, but I’m very happy when other artists discover this medium and it doesn’t bother me at all if I copy some of the technology. Because this medium needs technology like a musical instrument to operate it, but the expression can hardly be more individual and the possibilities are unlimited.“
johann franki 2006
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