Wheels - concentric narrative

Hardly any form in cultural history is as familiar to us as the circle, the round, the circular wheel, the WHEEL. The wheel in all its patterns of use is for us an indispensable achievement of civilisation, and at the same time in its circular form a symbol of the perfect, the infinite, the spiritual, the cycle of life, rebirth, as a symbol of the sun and as a wheel an archaic symbol of dynamics and speed, fate and time. Life and the circle - are symbiotically connected.

"Everything you want to express is form," the Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012) instructed Bernd Caspar Dietrich. "Don't paint anything that is real, squeeze it off, put it on the canvas as it is. Everything is information and needs no translation." With the WHEELS series, Bernd Caspar Dietrich consistently follows the words of his Spanish teacher, whom he met at the end of the 1980s in Düsseldorf at the Hete Hünermann Gallery. Tàpies motivated BCD to work with sand.

With the WHEELS series, BCD tells of his journeys and stories he has experienced. They are always self-contained cycles and concentric spirals of memory that dominate the centre of the picture in a large-scale, mostly impasto sandmill-like manner. They always revolve in a Vitruvian manner around the centre, around the navel, the inner virtual circle. As if separated, the memory narratives rise from the squared picture backgrounds and leave them behind as the narrative stage of history. As if releasing their thoughts, they invite them, mantra-like, into a resonant relationship with the viewer.  The WHEELS open up for individual thoughts and memories, they pass on the immanent light and at the same moment are themselves enough. In some works, a diffuse reflection in the WHEELS is provided by the painting medium "glass powder", which also provides reflections in road signs. When the viewer changes the angle of view in front of the work, moves, the work changes. Bernd Caspar Dietrich also works with traces of iron oxide in the ground, which change colour with increasing humidity and breathe thoughts. As a memory of the image, BCD uses different types of phosphor that store the movement in front of the image for eternity, provided a spotlight is directed at the image. Just as phosphorus is responsible for life, the works glow in the dark - as if life were also in them. An almost magical experience: the impact of the pictures from within themselves.

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Work series “Metamorphosen"

Paintings from the series Metamorphosen have gone through various stages of development. They are built up in different layers of sand, concrete, pigment, bone glue and water. They were stretched, framed and shown in exposed locations.

At the same time, these paintings rest in a state of pupae. They return to the studio, shed their skin and bring forth something completely new. Zoologically - and with the request for indulgence, here follows a googled mini excursus into biology - the pupa becomes the so-called imago, the sexually mature full insect. A pupa is a morphologically clearly defined, usually almost or completely motionless transitional stage. Through pupal dormancy, a grub becomes a finished beetle and a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Metamorphoses can be complete or incomplete, in the latter case the abdomen of egg-producing females still increases in circumference... be that as it may, back to art.

The natural transformation takes place in the studio through a different form of skinning. The painting is taken out of the frame and the canvas is detached from the mouldings. Then it gets brutal! Through deliberate hammer blows to the upper and lower surfaces of the painting, the form pupates and a complete morphological transformation takes place. Through the metamorphosis, the painting achieves a new physical form and purpose with its breaking open haptics.

"It's about finishing a cycle," says Bernd Caspar Dietrich. "The first cycle has been completed, the second cycle begins with the pupa. The smashing is the same as the pupa. And during the process of smashing and the energy that is released there, the new image is already forming - that is, the butterfly or the ladybird, if we remain in the animal analogy. When it is smashed, the new form actually emerges. And let's stay with the ladybird again: it comes out at night and strives towards the light, while the butterfly strives towards the flower or the moth also towards the light. That is, they all orient themselves towards an energetic source. The energetic source in metamorphosis is actually inspiration, what you feel in the process of destruction. That is important. A blow breaks the surface and what breaks cannot always be controlled one hundred percent, but nevertheless it follows an inspiration, a feeling of knowing that what I am doing and how I am doing it is right.

The WHEEL Metamorphose ORANGE 25 has passed through different stages. In the concrete foundation lies a reflective concave round shape with the appearance of a parabolic mirror, the umbilical cord of the information age. In the next pupation, the mirror peels away to form the primeval continent of Pangaea, which originally encompassed all the land masses of the earth. The texture of a camouflage suit was already laid out in it. The camouflage suit as the basis of violence. From the violence of nature and the shifting of the continents, glowing lava emerged in bright orange. The colour lays itself centrally and connecting across the primeval continent and towards the edges like life veins that turn into tears. They flow in all directions. The radiant yellow-orange marginalises the deep injuries and radical impacts in the concrete surface. Through many conversations around the actions Orange the world and ZONTA says NO! the image metamorphosis ORANGE25 has skinned into an "End violence against woman and girls". Violence in general remains a global social issue that concerns us all.