Ralf Weingart (2001)
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Sounding the possibilities of designing with paint—in connection with researching its visual appearance under the ambient factors of the painting—are the central issues of concern for Andreas Barth.
Even the earlier figurative work, sketch-like gouaches developed from the open factor of the application of the paint. Supported by the gestural verve and spontaneous decisiveness of the brush stroke, the paint begins a rhythmic motion and can penetrate atmospherically, reticulate or form contrasting zones of intensity. Encouraged by his mentor, Johannes Müller, Barth started to move away from recognizable representation at the beginning of the 90’s and came to an almost radical simplification of pictorial elements in his works on paper. With this reduction to elementary, basic forms, he began to concentrate on non-color, or values of black and white.
First a medium of presentation, paint now becomes pictorial content and is interesting in this sense mostly as material substance, as emphasized by the use of rust, tar and ash. The method of application loses its gestural character in this correlation and allows more the materiality and material character of the employed paint substance to come to the fore.
In the early 90’s, his pictorial acrylic painting on paper consisted of a restrained palette whose alternating tempering reveals an atmospheric effect. Often, an uneven application of graphically intensified rectangular forms were set against different, mainly transparent colors and ground which almost completely cover the paper. Stripe-like brush strokes structure and nuance the paint, build a sense of three-dimensional space by the overlapping of layers. Changing to large format oil painting often leads to a quieting and a tendency for the palette to become more monochrome. Much more, a varnished penetration invokes a more or less muted, partly blackened misty character of an emotionally charged spatiality. Its weightless, transitory quality holds the eye and invites the viewer to sink contemplatively into the slowness and timelessness of the painting. In addition to these are works where the palette has been kept to black, white and gray, in which the new brush stroke has become impulsive and gestural, creating surface texture that enters into a vibrating interaction with the canvas.
Barth, at the same time developed in extensive series—almost entirely on paper— an increasingly differentiated structure of vertical painted stripes from the color variation of visible brush strokes. It is revealed in conclusive, methodical logic by maintaining a layered application of paint, as a division of monochrome surfaces, through the application of bands of varying width. Even at the beginning we find works that—starting from graphic upright vertical stripes in the center—become a symmetrical, spatially modifying arrangement of stripes. This assures compositional unity, fixes and intensifies the combination into a very delicate accord of color.
Newer works ignore a comparable, symmetrical principle of order of row-like stripes and create a string of stripes that alternate in width and become a rhythmic structure. The conceptual and at the same time, experimental character intensifies, moments of chance step in. The arrangement of stripes becomes a field for experimenting with the establishment of the effect of an alternation of color. They decide, in an interaction of color quality, intensity, lightness and surroundings, equally on the optical mixture of the single stripes as on their differentiated spatial effect. Compositional placements of accent prove themselves to be artistic, in the process of the mal-process, situative developed decisions. Their tendency toward harmonizing balance influences the pictorial rhythm as an all-over consonance of color and paint.
Quirky, curious moments unfold their trademark paint application. Recognizable brush strokes, irregularities, overflowing edges of paint and thin glazes that allow the under painting to show through, break through the surface and homogenous character of the stripes, withhold the optical-illusion effect of “paint itself” in the factuality of painting. Also in this sense, “the sensual quality of the paint…over a rational-methodical concept”,9 Barth manages to achieve his own unique contribution compared with other accentuated approaches, as formulated by the hard-edged-color field school of painting.
The same goes for monochrome canvases that Barth combines, in minimalist reduction as small-format rectangulars and squares, into pairs placed above or next to one another. The choice of format and color aim at the consideration, just as calculatedly as intuitively, of equalized states of balance. While comparable works on paper also contrast intensive, signal-like lit value of color, the paintings on canvas are limited to mainly weightless greens, grays and crème tones. These can be experienced in the varying materiality of the paint—intense and lacquer-like or sublime with thin glazes, but always with an effectual differentiation.