The Australian 11 December 2000
Visual Art
The Colour of Paint
Alex Spremberg
Galerie Düsseldorf Perth
Ends 17 December 2000


ALEX Spremberg is obsessed with paint. The sticky, viscous substance that colours objects has had an enduring fascination for him since his early training in Germany under Franz E. Walther at Hamburg's Academy of Fine Arts.

For 30 years he has been absorbed by the process of covering surfaces with opaque and translucent skins to create objects that have a new existence.

This might sound like a convoluted way of saying that Spremberg is a painter but it is an important variation on that simple epithet. The works he produces are explorations of the processes of applying paint and of the capacity of the medium to shape itself and provide new visual forms. He is not an artist who uses paint to tell other stories; instead he is interested in
allowing it to tell its own story of genesis.

His current exhibition at the Galerie Düsseldorf continues the direction he established with his last Perth show in 1996, in which the surfaces of his three dimensional forms were created from
thousands of small stalactites of varnish encrusting the surfaces. These extraordinary
works had an unearthly character, as if they had appeared on the planet for the first time by some kind of intergalactic trade. The Protrusion series in this show are their heirs but without the fantastic genetic coding that seemed to create new forms and several new categories of objects.

The varnish protrusions emerging from a flat surface are locked into the confines of a frame and have the look of paintings. Indeed, most of the new works are rooted in our everyday experience of the varnish and enamel Spremberg uses, but the shimmering play of light across their translucent surfaces harks back to those earlier, magical works.

The old adage "as interesting as watching paint dry" takes on a different meaning when confronted with these new works. Spremberg has mastered the strategic intervention into the drying process of enamel paint and in his hands nothing could be more interesting.

In Black on White and White on Black the extraordinary shapes in the all-over composition of the two panels is formed through the seepage of slowly drying paint. The shapes that emerge
are the result of colours finding their place on the surface as the process of forming a solid skin gradually counteracts the forces of gravity.

Of course any mechanistic description of these works ignores their visual impact as paintings. While the desire to get closer to discover how these amazing surfaces have been created must be
appeased, the most satisfying aspect of any encounter is the longer view, when the technicalities of their production is forgotten and the absorbing forms and internal rhythms capture and entrance.

In this regard, Black on White is remarkable because although its forms are familiar to anyone who has prized open an old can of enamel paint and been fascinated by the patterns formed
by the shrinkage of the skin of paint across the surface, the energy and complexity of the image is completely engaging. While it summons up associations with the magnification of cell life
under a microscope, images of the cosmos or our endless fascination at the flicker of light across the surface of water, it is also unique and offers an entirely fresh visual experience.

Another series of paintings is large and is mostly composed of multiple panels. They are the record of their own formation detailed in the flow of varnish poured over the surface. Several of the wooden panels are painted in a grid of pastel~coloured rectangles and the contrast of the toffee-like varnish with the formal geometry beneath is surprising and it is this that sustains interest.

Large skeins of thick varnish are interesting, as Dale Frank has shown but only to a point. The paintings in this show that have a complex history of overlays and accretions, and perplexing clues to their birth are ultimately more rewarding.

This is an excellent show and the varnish paintings, White on Black and Black on White and the Doodlehive Suite provide evidence of a maturity and a refined elegance that has emerged
in Alex Spremberg's work.

Ted Snell
The Australian
11 December 2000