INTERVIEW with Robert Reschkowski (GERMANY, Düsseldorf )

Art is a medium of encounter and transformation. What can art do? Art can free us by captivating us. And art leads to art! And how do we get to art? And very often it is our inner or outer lack of freedom that leads to art, as we are able to overcome intellectual, social, economic and political limitations with art. Art does not lead to Liberty of thought; Art is a form of liberated thinking that is not limited by concepts! Art always finds ways to express the horror and the pain in such a way that the soul is reconciled with itself and the clarity of the spirit is not clouded!

ZITA V.: Dear Robert, could you please introduce yourself to our readers and briefly describe the principles of your creation.

R.R.: Art is a medium of encounter and transformation (RR 1988).What can art do? Art can free us by captivating us. And art leads to art! And how do we get to art? And very often it is our inner or outer lack of freedom that leads to art, as we are able to overcome intellectual, social, economic, and political limitations with art. Art does not lead to Liberty of thought; Art is a form of liberated thinking that is not limited by concepts! Art always finds ways to express the horror and the pain in such a way that the soul is reconciled with itself and the clarity of the spirit is not clouded!

ZITA V.: Dear Robert, could you please introduce yourself to our readers and briefly describe the principles of your creation.

R.R.: To me art is a “medium of encounter and transformation” (RR 1988). Having just turned 73 a couple of days ago, I have been involved in art for the last 54 years. I originally studied painting in 1970-1977 at the Fine Arts Academy in Duesseldorf, North Rhine Westphalia, Germany, under the tutelage of Prof. Ruprecht Geiger and Prof. Gotthard Graubner, as well as art history, art didactics, and philosophy. In January, 1979, after working as an art teacher for a few years, I decided to go on a long study trip throughout Latin America and ended up in Rio de Janeiro, where I lived and worked as a painter from 1980 to 1984. In 1984/85 I returned to Germany to hold various exhibitions of my paintings.

In 1988, I began to “perform” and no longer define myself as an artist through the medium of painting. Since then I have been using different media, working intermedially and interdisciplinary. In 1990, I radically questioned the term “art” and the function of art as well as the role of an artist in society and the art market. As a result, I stopped producing sellable artefacts. In 1919 , I started painting again using the theme “Back to the Roots” and until 2023 I had produced four large “painting projects” with painting cycles named:
1. “Yûgen” / 2. “Élan vital” / 3. “Tandava” / 4. “Wu Wei-Dào”

My aesthetic strategies aim at refraction and transgression, performatively they are characterized by “Happening and Fluxus”. In my paintings, my pictorial strategies are influenced both by classical Japanese aesthetics and by Henri Bergson’s concept of an “Élan vital” as well as by the late Claude Monet, the painter of the water lily panoramas in the Rotonde of the Orangerie in Paris, with which he questioned the traditional European paintings. He transcended them with his energetic colour-light environments and pictorial sequences.

My design principles are process-orientated and performative. In my current paintings I am less interested in the individual work and the single, singular pictorial structure and more focused on a serial painterly movement and modulation over an extended cycle of pictures, which adapt to the given space during presentations in such a way that a contemplative atmosphere and a corresponding devotional space is created. The individual pictorial figures in the cycle function as objects of devotion and meditation.

ZITA V.: If you were to describe yourself as an artist in one word, what would it be?

R.R.: Inspirer and transformer.

ZITA V.: You are a multifaceted artist, but looking at your work from the outside, it is very difficult to feel the line where performance ends and painting begins. I would like to talk about performance, but I think you will reveal many points where the boundaries no longer exist. What is performance for you, how did it become a means of expression in your art?

R.R.: I would rather describe myself as a versatile, artistic person. My life is a performance in front of changing backdrops, in different contexts, using all available media and resources. I have been travelling as an artist for 54 years as well as working as a management consultant and business coach in SMEs and corporations for the last 26 years.

Heraklit’s “panta rhei” is my motto in life. “In the flow of life, my activities permeate each other and all is one”. I don’t look at my work from the outside, rather I ecstatically empty myself in it and go beyond a supposedly familiar interiority, my previous experiences, and intentions. For me, this is a radical, poetic act of liberation, which I described back in 1988 as “a departure into the incomprehensible, driven by a longing for infinity.” At the time, I described my performances as “aesthetic terrorism with a ritually controlled rampage”.

The stranger I become myself, the more alive and freer I feel. My thinking and my artistic practice are not orientated towards boundaries and identity, nor towards self-certainty, homogeneity, and freedom from contradiction. What drives me are contradiction and contingency, ambivalence and transgression, condensation and dissolution. Acceleration and deceleration, timing and rhythm, emptiness and interspace are essential ingredients of my performatively composed and poetically tuned life dances, and creative processes in all my multifaceted life and work contexts.

ZITA V.: What creates boundaries in creativity?

R.R.: Constricting mindsets, greed and narcissism, fear and striving for power, laziness and habit, routine and pride. Ideology, delusion, and the delusion of being important. What pushes me creatively beyond myself are my doubts and my obsession, and unconditional devotion, my questionability and my curiosity.

ZITA V.: Performance, as an artistic expression, deeply involved in existential questions, allows the creator to explore human existence, to reveal the experiences of the body and presence. The performance allows the creator to feel his body and presence here and now. Movement, light, sound, and physical interaction with the environment reveal the importance of existence. As a creator, playing different roles, searching for yourself, how much do you confront your inner “I”?

R.R.: Presence is the magic word not only for the performer RR, but for human beings in general; it is the key to vitality and self-growth! I confront myself and provoke resistance and current confrontation, confrontation in all fields as the creator and the one being created. I aim for a challenge in both directions, externally and internally. This is a vitalizing, intensive driving force to grow beyond what has gone before. Neither in my art nor in my “art of living” do I hold with Picasso’s quote “I do not seek, I find”. Philippe Soupault’s “I do not seek, I am there” is much closer to me. I surrender to my “BEING THERE” more and more, and in doing so, I am increasingly able to leave something like “I” behind me, forgetting myself. Behind me, whereby I instrumentalize the various ‘I’s within me for roles in the various life and art performances. The professionalism of skilful handling consists of not identifying with these ego parts. In the same way, I do not identify with my visual works and performances. They are equally familiar and alien to me. I surrender to my “BEING THERE” more and more, and in doing so I am increasingly able to leave something like “I” behind me, forgetting myself, whereby I instrumentalise the various ‘I’s within me for roles in the various life and art performances. The professionalism of skilful handling consists of not identifying with these ego parts. In the same way, I do not identify with my visual works and performances. They are equally familiar and alien to me.

ZITA V.: Let’s talk about “flow” and “being stuck” – how does the deep flow of thought affect attitude, self-determination, and relationships with presence itself?

R.R.: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi shows it in his book “Flow. The Secret of Happiness.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains what flow is all about and how it can be achieved. One prerequisite for flow is intrinsic motivation, i.e. doing something for its own sake, not extrinsically orientated towards reward. Another prerequisite for flow is presence, i.e. mindfulness and self-awareness of what is happening. A third necessity is to neither set the bar for performance too high, which would lead to excessive demands and frustration, according to Mihaly, nor too low, which would lead to boredom and frustration. It’s about being completely absorbed in the process and growing beyond oneself in the process, whereby the “performance slats” are then raised all by themselves, in line with what is currently present and possible. And it is precisely this that makes for a lasting experience of happiness. This kind of intrinsic motivation and process experience results in a different mindset than one-sided extrinsic motivation, which can lead to excessive demands and burnout in the long term, as can permanent underchallenge. These thoughts and ideas of an expanded concept of art and a transformative role of the artist have certainly influenced me subcutaneously.

ZITA V.: The essence of the creator lies in his individuality, authenticity, and irreplaceability. Could we say that your work is a philosophy of your attitude and self-determination? What questions do you raise in your relationship with the world and the concept of time?

R.R.: The essence of the creator lies in his individuality, authenticity, and irreplaceability. I only allow myself to add, and equally in the cosmic universality of the creative. Joseph Beuys, whom I met again and again in person at the Duesseldorf Academy of fine Art in the 1970s, described man’s true capital as his creative capacity and inexhaustible creative potential, which he is able to bring to bear in the various contexts and levels of intellectual life, legal life, and economic life. In this sense, every human being is an artist and can create art. Based on these ideas, Beuys used this term to refer in particular to the creativity of people who, working together, could produce a “social art” in the form of a social sculpture that would change the world and society. The various aesthetic strategies and means that Beuys used for this purpose had for him a sensual and communicative-instrumental character and were an expression of his creative thinking. These thoughts and ideas of an expanded concept of art and a transformative role of the artist have certainly influenced me subcutaneously.

ZITA V.: What topics are the most inspiring and provocative for you as a creator?

R.R.: The idea of a second enlightenment and overcoming a limiting and domination-orientated instrumental reason that is excessively focused on global expansion instead of resonance deepening in the sense of Hartmut Rosa’s publication “Resonanz-Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung”.

https://amzn.eu/d/25WDlE9

As early as 1996, Wolfgang Welsch offered an approach for such a project with his approach of a “transversal reason,” which involves both aesthetic thinking and forms of aesthetic practice as well as an aesthetically attuned relationship to the world.

Reason: The contemporary critique of reason and the concept of transversal reason

https://amzn.eu/d/0Ltupy9

ZITA V.: At the beginning of your creative journey, there were many teachers, pedagogues, outstanding personalities. Could you single out one person who perhaps gave you a singular impetus that made things exactly the way they are now? Or maybe your path is and always has been consistent?

R.R.: From 1970, I was in the painting class of Ruprecht Geiger, who was a professor of painting at the Duesseldorf Fine Academy of Fine Arts. When he made me his master student in 1973/74, he first said: I thought you had to find your own style, until I realized that your uniqueness lies precisely in always going further and changing, and trying out the most diverse styles, media and aesthetic strategies. Never let gallery owners and collectors, curators and art critics determine your style. Always follow your own path in your own way. I have stuck to this ever since that day, and intend to continue to do so in the future! In his painting classes he gave us all his trust, strengthened and inspired us by pointing out not only the formal weaknesses of our pictures, but above all, special qualities and our own style. He commented on his teaching in 1975 in the facsimile publication “Geiger’s Sketchbook” under the heading “My Students”:

“They are not under the spell of my teaching. They experience it through and through, but they don’t go with it. I can never achieve that they become the way my experiences have moulded me. They will only ever obey their own longing to live for themselves, the important thing is that I give them the confidence to be strong in the future. They will be given shelter, material to test themselves for the new things that await them.”

And he strengthened us again and again, encouraging us with his words: “Go your own way and beyond me”. It should be noted that Ruprecht Geiger accepted students from all over the world, who also painted very differently—whether abstract or figurative, didn’t matter, he was always interested in individuality. My own art teaching, my dealings with artists and artistic creations were always orientated towards this, whether as an art teacher at the Haus Aspel grammar school in Rees on the Lower Rhine, or in my dealings with artists when curating national and international exhibition projects, or in artists’ groups in which I was involved or initiated myself, or when I accompanied artists as a coach, advising them a short time on their artistic path.

ZITA V.: Which of your creative projects are the most important to you? Please tell us about them.

R.R.: It’s always my current project! I am currently planning and preparing an “opus magnum” with the working title “clearing”—in German “Lichtung”, a term elaborated by Martin Heidegger. I would like to show the opus in April 2025, in my solo exhibition in Germany at the Kunstverein Duisburg. It is a panorama in the form of a cycle of six oil paintings on canvas on stretcher frames. Each 210x240x4.5 cm format. I will be working on a cross-format painting with flowing transitions. The panorama will be the culmination of my previous painting cycle “Wu Wei-Dào”. I am working on a comprehensive workbook to be published for the exhibition, in which all the pictures in the cycle are illustrated as well as the Heidegger text above and the text below:

About my project Title “Wu Wei-Dào”

“WuWei is generally translated as non-doing. It is an attitude to life that is also practised in Chinese painting. The same motif is painted over and over again – a mountain or a tree, for example. What could this have to do with non-doing? Doesn’t it get boring to always paint the same motif? It’s not primarily about the motif or the result of the painting, but about the process. The artist is practising an attitude to life. He tries to harmonise his work with Tao. According to Chinese tradition, Tao is the principle of origin through which everything comes into being and is kept alive. It is a higher, spiritual and divine principle of order, the wisdom of which far surpasses human, rational comprehension. The painter aligns himself with this higher principle and attunes himself to it. He no longer wants to be the doer, the painter, but Tao should be able to work through him, through his hand. He “does” and yet does not do. He actively stands in non-action. You could also call it a non-intervention, a non-intervention in the laws of Tao. The painter allows these laws to work intuitively through him; he tries to unite himself with Tao’s creative work, to recognise and reproduce it in the motif of the picture. Through the painting process, he learns to distinguish between the extent to which he still wants to realize his own will and the extent to which he can let Tao work within him. Because Dào is in everything, without Dào there is nothing.” (By Anita
Vieten)

“Zhuangzi on the Dào”

“Zhuangzi, the author of the traditional Dàoist standard work The True Book of the Southern Flowering Land, opted for a different variant of the existing Dào teachings: he understood the Dào primarily as the moving force and as the principle of life. The Dào determines the path of the world and moves all things. The “ten thousand things” are constantly changing. The Dào is incredibly vast and without form. It unites death and life, connects heaven and earth and can be reached through enlightenment. The Dào connects the “ten thousand things” in such a way that one no longer wants to turn to the individual. The emphasis on the Dào as a movement was reflected in his decision to depict his views in conversations and also in his emphasis on people’s ability to change.”

ZITA V.: What is the present tense for you? How does it affect you as an artist?

R.R.: The present, contemporaneity, omnipresence. Yes, time passes so quickly, I can see it in the children, yesterday they were still in a pram and now they’re ready to weigh anchor and set off on their own great journey through life. That’s how children become people and we become grandpas/grannies and the people of yesterday, whose thoughts and actions unfortunately seem to be yesterday’s news for more and more of our “contemporaries”. For me, true contemporaneity has nothing to do with being lost in the drunken present, which is permeated by an unreflective, uncritical zeitgeist that is obsessed with itself. I move at right angles to this kind of unconcern and enjoy the inspiring presence of great minds, which reveals itself in eternal youth in the works they have left us, and is able to refresh us again and again. And so we can remember and reflect on what our contribution has always been, even if it was “only” small rapids in the great river of the spirit through space and time. And we should not only be proud of this, we should proudly acknowledge it now and realise with whom we were able to walk this path together.

ZITA V.: If you could give a message to those who will live 100 years later from now. What would you like to tell them now?

R.R.: The time is always ripe, happiness is knowing what for. Trust your potential, risk yourself, surrender and go beyond your supposed limits. Be mindful and present, don’t let fear scare you, practice meditation and go out into nature, be moderate with your indulgences and take care of your health every day through a balanced diet and physical exercise. Look at the different cultural achievements of other eras and continents and don’t make hasty judgements.

ZITA V.: Maybe you want to say something that I haven’t asked yet, but is very important to you?

R.R.: I consider the category of the new and artistic innovation to be questionable. In my opinion, it’s not about what you do and whether it’s something new, but how you do something, at best in your own way, whatever others may find fault with it! There are universal expressive characters in European and non-European art and cultural history as well as in early history and prehistoric artefacts! And such a manifestation of “expressive characters” with C.G. Jung one could also speak of “archetypes” – it is not a question of a stylistic-formal orientation, but rather a question of the field of consciousness and a contemplative-spiritual attunement to it. And modern artists, from Hilmar Af Klint to Picasso and many others, have been inspired by and utilized this. And that’s a good thing!

ZITA V.: Thank you for the conversation.