Dr. Robert Sagerman

Geboren 1966 in Bayside, N.Y (USA). Er lebt und arbeitet in Jersey City, N.Y.

Der amerikanische, in Brooklyn arbeitende Maler verwirklicht mit seinen „Farbkörpern“ einen neuen Ansatz in der „monochromen“ Malerei. Erst bei genauerem Betrachten erkennt man die Farbtupfer aus purer, eigenständig angerührter Ölfarbe als eine Schichtung von tausenden von „marks“, die minutiös auf die Leinwand mit einem Spachtelmesser aufgetragen werden. So entsteht, Schichtung für Schichtung, ein mehr oder minder vielfarbiges Farbfeld auf der Oberfläche der Leinwand, das den Betrachter dazu einlädt, den Blick in dessen Tiefe zu versenken.

Im Gegensatz zu ähnlichen malerischen Positionen, die bei flüchtiger Betrachtung zitiert werden, stellt sich Sagerman einer völlig anderen Aufgabe, die einen eher konzeptuellen Charakter aufweist. Er dokumentiert seine Arbeit vom ersten Schritt des Anmischens der Farben bis hin zum einzelnen Auftrag der Öltupfer. Die Summe der Öltupfer, die er „marks“ nennt, z.B. ’12,354’ wird dann zum Titel der Arbeit.  

Born 1966 in Bayside, N.Y (USA). Lives and works in Jersey City, N.Y.

With his “colour bodies” Sagerman has created a new approach in monochrome painting. It is only on closer inspection of his works that one sees that the coloured dabs of pure oil paint, mixed by the artist himself, are actually a layering of thousands of “marks” – meticulously applied with a palette-knife to the canvas – that invite the viewer to lose himself in their depths.

Although similar approaches to painting are alluded to in Sagerman’s work, the artist has actually taken on a completely different task that is more conceptual in nature. He documents his work from the very first step of mixing the colours to the application of the oil dabs. The sum of all the oil dabs, which he calls “marks”, for example “12,354”, is then used as the title of his painting.  

Ausbildung / Education

"25,374"  Öl auf Leinwand, 48 x 46 in, 122 x 117 cm, 2009

"25,285" Öl auf Leinwand, 60 x 54 in, 152 x 137 cm, 2008

EINZELAUSSTELLUNGEN (Auswahl)

"1.253" Öl auf Leinwand, 30,5 x 30,5cm, 2008

"7,619" Öl auf Leinwand, 26 x 25 in, 66 x 64 cm, 2009

AUSSTELLUNGSBETEILIGUNGEN (Auswahl)

"3,783" Öl auf Leinwand, 21 x 20 in, 53 x 51 cm, 2008

Academic Awards and Fellowships

"3,316" Öl auf Leinwand, 26.5 x 25.5 inch, 66 x 64 cm, 2007

SAMMLUNGEN Deutschland (Museum) / PUBLIC COLLECTIONS IN GERMANY

Karl-Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Hagen (Germany)

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STATEMENT OF ROBERT SAGERMAN

From the beginnings of my attraction to abstract painting, an interest in a sensed metaphysical content has guided me. I have always conceived of my all-over type of painting as an encounter with the imperceptible substratum of physical reality. My eventual turn to an emphasis on the materiality of paint itself read to me as an attempt to thwart that very property, to bring forward for scrutiny paint’s materiality for the purpose of subverting it, of transcending it in favor of that which undergirds it. The increasingly sensual properties of my paint application and color choices now seem as well directed toward this end, though they also operate for me as evocative triggers, serving to enlist emotion and imagination as well toward these same ends. A persistently meditative painting practice is for me commensurate with this effort as well. In time and by chance I came to discover some years ago that my same interests with respect to an essence underlying perceptible reality also occupied the minds of medieval kabbalists. They constructed elaborate symbologies for the purpose of experientially bridging the gap from the material to its – for them – divine underpinnings.

Against this backdrop, my process, geared toward this same objective, assumed a devotional aspect in my estimation. I became particular interested in coming to understand the systems that these medieval thinkers brought to bear on their task. This led me in time to undertake doctoral studies in their kabbalah at NYU. What has particular engaged me has been the hermeneutical processes of these mystics, within which interpretive responses to mystical experiences, to received exegetical tradition and to inspired exegeses of their own, operating in an elaborate self-supporting manner, had allowed these thinkers to transcend, in their, view, mundane experience. I came to draw an analogy for myself between such processes and what I saw as a relentless mental reflex operating for me in the studio, this reflecting the need to synthesize over and over again fresh interpretations of the nature of my elusive project or of its consequences.

Some in particular of the mystics whom I study conceived of the climactic moment of what they viewed as a mystical unification with the divine as an encounter with their own self. Revelation stood for them as the experiential realization that the divine represented a transcendent projection of their own being. In this sense, notions of subjectivity and objectivity collapsed for these mystics into a revelatory tautology. Such a conception was well in accord with the type of hermeneutical circularity in which they also engaged, and into which I had begun to tap in the encounter with my own work. In time I came to perceive that the emphasis of conceptualists such as Bochner and Kosuth upon the significance of tautologies in the cultural arena paralleled the medieval mystical models around which I began to actually construct some of my own studio practice.

The data tabulations that I keep, as well as the painting titles that I generate from this data, are close adaptations of such medieval meditative practice, based upon deriving exegetical interpretations from the interplay of the numerical value of letters. I base my own such operations on data such as the number of marks applied for a given color in a particular painting.

Just as the field quality of my work reads for me as an effort to move past paint’s materiality, so too does the accumulation of painting data seem to penetrate to that which underlies the field. Then too, the interpretive processes that I have adapted for my own purposes seem to break open the data itself to endless possibilities for the permutation of meaning. The videos that today accompany my work, comprised as well of this data, extend the idea of my art praxis as a totalizing tautology. Much to my own disadvantage, I am not privy to the same kind of credulity as the medieval kabbalist with respect to his efforts and their mystical consequences.

The expansion of my painting activity into other self-reflexive manifestations – ledgers and video – marks my own move toward achieving a deepened level of immersion in my own system, somewhat after the manner of the medieval kabbalist. An awareness of the thinking of modern anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz, who explored the extent to which all-encompassing cultural systems both reflect and generate one’s perceived experience of reality, undergirds my approach. Such an attitude well accords with that of Wittgenstein, whose inspiration was responsible for the artwork that stands as a distant archetype for me for my own project, Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” of 1965.

"16,710" Öl auf Leinwand, 104 x 180 cm, 2008 - Detail