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Arnd Kaestner
- "Standards" Arnd Kaestner presents three groups of works, summarised under the heading of “Standards”. One is a group of small-format images of shelves and corrugated surfaces, another a series of schematised building types and another of large-format, wall paintings specially conceived for the gallery space. In his paintings, Kaestner reduces the forms to a few, basic elements. The design of his pictures seems to want to pay tribute to serially manufactured products. In this manner, attention is brought to supposedly unattractive and ignored objects such as structured sheet metal, shelves or garage doors. However, Arnd Kaestner’s artistic interest should never be misunderstood for the intentional direction of a minimalist. While comparable in their unwieldliness and simple beauty to the works of Donald Judd or Carl Andres, in this case we are dealing with artefact paintings. As images of manufactured products, the pictures possess an absolute and meaningful structure with an inner point of reference, so that the ‘meaning’ is in no way transferred to the outside as in the case of the minimalists. While working on his wall painting installations specifically conceived for the gallery space, Arnd Kaestner emphasises the value placed on autonomous works of art and the connections between the work and the viewer, the art and the reception space. On the content level this relationship is again mirrored in the presentation of his motifs, which mark the border between the intrinsic artistic value of industrially produced products and their standing beyond any artistic allusion. Arnd Kaestner sees the “Standards” series as “kind of homage to the art of the early Italians all the way to Donald Judd.” He adds: “I’m trying to re-introduce the ‘meditative’ aspect which, since the discovery of things in Pop-Art (and everything that followed), has often been lost. However a movement towards ‘things’ does not have to be accompanied by a loss of the ‘visual’ – the Renaissance proves this beautifully! An art that is not afraid to FABRICATE and allow the world to happen within the framework of the picture. And this even BEFORE the focal point. (…) Amongst the minimalists then of the 60s and the 70s, such as Andre, and Judd and Agnes of course, the contemplative, the reading-movement and the time structuring is found again. Judd, above all, aims at the object but never at its daily charm. To transform things out of their daily setting seemed obsolete. But this transformation is my world. One sees these kinds of things every day, but they do not always reveal themselves. That depends on the light. Sometimes it is nothing more (but also nothing less) than a quick movement of the eyes, a measurement.”
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