Paint in abundance



Jochen Schambeck who has always been drawn to the medium of painting, has made a point to comment the much-discussed “end of painting” with his paintings. They are an adverse expression, a statement added to the discussion about the rule of photography as opposed to painting. During a phase at the end of the 1990s photography and media art indeed pushed painting aside in popularity, even though in the studios artists kept painting. The decline, the death and the end of painting was discussed. During this time the artist Schambeck was advised to reach for more up to date forms of expression. But he persisted and ignored the advice, armed himself with a great amounts of tubes and cans of oil paint and painted paintings which have the declared as dead art of painting and its primary medium, paint itself as a subject and show these in abundance. His painting in oil appears like the portrayed oil tanker: overloaded and full. The oil tanker becomes a symbol for painting in oil: he leaves, as he is sinking his load of paint and something new is created from it.

And this is how the seemingly gruesome scenarios in the paintings of Schambeck are turned into their opposites: out of the catastrophe of leaking paint cans the end of painting is not to be expected, but the art of painting is created and a seemingly untamed flow of paint can not stop it. Out of the flow of paint the art of painting, the painting itself is created- the flow of the paint is the art of painting…

An orgiastic paint party is celebrated here, which wants to spite “the end of painting” to excess. Paint is not used as an object to achieve, but it is made the subject.

Corporal movement and the psychological as the physical feat lead to a “paint material battle”, which in turn opened up feelings and solved inner tensions. “Oil on troubled waters” (pouring oil into the waves, and calming the waves) to Schambeck means to “get a grip” on his inner troubles with the help of the process of painting. The trouble, as he wrote about himself, seems to be the inspiration for many of his paintings.

Any attempt to catalog Jochen Schambeck in an art historical sense will result in interesting encounters and dialogs. But you will definitely not find an artist who paints like Schambeck. His emotionally loaded way of painting is impossible to separate from his person.



Ulrike Lehmann


(Extract from the catalogue text: "oil on troubled waters", 2005)
(© Ulrike Lehmann, 2005)
(Translation: Renate Kempowski, Los Angeles)