Wolfgang Ullrich
Creating Unyieldingness

In texts about painting, it is virtually an obligation to appreciate the facture. After all, traces of the working process are almost always more evident in paintings than in any other imagery. Sometimes it is possible to infer further layers of paint concealed beneath the surface, sometimes the paint’s application may be particularly thick or completely translucent, while at other times dripping, individual brushstrokes, or areas of unmodulated color can be distinguished, or it may also be possible to discern where a section was covered with adhesive tape during the working process, or has been subsequently corrected. In many cases, looking at a painting may involve more time and closer observation of how it has been made than the motifs or composition.
While the facture of Christian Hellmich’s paintings likewise offers much for such analytical examination, there is also something else to them. The viewer may be of the impression that the manner in which the painter leaves the facture visible is testimony to his own pleasure in the work involved in painting, but also the desire for the act of painting itself to be apprehended as labor. In his paintings, decisions can be retraced, not only occasionally, but at almost every point: that, and in what manner, he has applied yet another layer, has added additional motifs only at a later stage, scraped off an application of paint, revised a blending of colors, or sprayed over a particular area all remain visible. We could therefore speak of an immense compression and refinement of the material process, and anyone wishing to understand it all suddenly has a lot to do themselves.
Such a task trains the viewer to employ the observation skills of a detective in attempting to decipher what prompted the artist to continue his work in the way he actually did, making it increasingly impres- sive that in Christian Hellmich’s paintings, in contrast to many other paintings, no quick-fix techniques have been developed and employed. Where in other bodies of work an attempt is made to create illusionistic pictorial space with just a few strokes or to find shortcuts in the painting process, such as creating certain effects with fewer layers or more rapid strokes, Hellmich does exactly the opposite. Additional approaches to applying paint always make themselves evident in his paintings; earlier stages of the painting become revealed once more, or there are certain areas that have been reworked several times. And a visitor to Christian Hellmich’s studio will not only discover that he works on several paintings at the same time but, what is more, will be able to see how much is occurring between individual layers, indeed how much a painting is actually capable of changing in the course of the painting process. Per- haps – and such an assumption could easily be arrived at – Hellmich is painting to be able to paint over what has gone before, to continue superimposing, time and again, completely different layers. And even when he declares a painting finished, the many references to its genesis means it retains the quality of a large construction site – appearing not at all static, but animated, and first and foremost full of surprises and promises.
The association with construction sites is made even more conspicuous in that Hellmich’s paintings almost always display sections of buildings and various types of architectural interior that are never completed and perfect, but which persist in the processes of being re-constructed, remain unfinished, and perhaps languish in a semi-dilapidated state or in some other process of transition. Hellmich frequently uses color schemes primarily associated with the post-war period of the 1950s, which would nowadays be regarded as somewhat morbid, invoking either nostalgia or melancholy, whereas the build- ings and objects in his paintings seem to originate from a variety of other eras, generating an effect of
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several periods of history being present simultaneously. Consequently, not only the individual paintings, but history itself would seem to emerge as the sum and interplay of multi-(hi)storied layers.
However, it is not only the unity of time that Hellmich disrupts in his paintings, the artist’s approach to pictorial spaces is likewise continually new. There are ruptures in perspective and an interspersing of both illusionistic and flattened areas in the painting. The eye is unable to find a fixed point from which to decipher the entire image. It would seem as if the space itself cannot come to rest, remaining in a state of continuous motion and change.
The fact that Christian Hellmich keeps the traces of the working process present to such an extent and also makes his paintings complex and unyielding in every other respect too, situates them in – thankful and salient – contrast to the strategies on display in the majority of today’s imagery. Such images are no less smart than the devices on which most of them have been generated; thoroughly processed by digital programs, but without any recognizable traces of their making. The discreetness in the facture typical of digital imagery may be generally perceived as a benefit, since the viewer does not get stuck on certain details or even become confused, but eventually it becomes boring, tedious, and cold. The fact that viewers are unable to linger on any particular point in order to understand something in more detail, or consider what the same image might have looked like at an earlier stage, or what the finished article could alternatively have looked like almost inevitably leads to its reception becoming a passive, dull, and correspondingly superficial act.
If painting is therefore generally in a position to develop new relevance in a completely digitalized world of imagery, this is especially true for paintings that embrace both facture and fracture such as those by Christian Hellmich. With them, everything that would otherwise be neglected becomes possible. They facilitate active thinking about both the subject matter and the way in which it has been depicted; and the fact that the image can be experienced as actual painting, as something handmade, makes for an all the more gratifying experience: each section and every moment has been considered, which enables the viewer to adopt a mode of renewed awareness and in doing so become all the more alive themselves.