Identity – Distance – Non-Identity On the analogy between memory processes and the painting of Uwe Wittwer by Ronald Schenkel translation by Barbara Hauss-Fitton How precise, how objective are our memories of images and colours? Everyone knows that the memory is no mere storage place, no treasure box that can be opened at will to expose its contents to the light of the present day. What is relegated to the memory lies in a relatively unstable place. Both forgetting and preserving come into play, but above all a third factor, something which signifies neither deletion nor simple retention: namely, alteration. Even a well-trained memory does not simply store what a person has seen, heard, or tasted; in the memory the experience is altered, associated with things to which it has no apparent connection. To put it succinctly: the memory transforms a recollection into something new. Or in other words: what one remembers is something new, not a duplication of what was originally seen, heard, or tasted, but something produced by the memory itself. According to Octavio Paz, and many other authors as well, the memory is a great storyteller. By this definition, it is a vital, creative entity, a voice which – completely independent from the influence of our consciousness – takes possession of the material that we believe to be securely stored in our neurological chamber. A voice – or perhaps it is sometimes a painting hand – which transforms our memory's experiential provisions into a series of images that exist on their own terms. Because the original visual experience and the image recorded in our brain are not identical, memories are commonly regarded as deceptive. What a strange, one-sided viewpoint this is. So far there appear to be only a few people, most of them artists, who bestow upon memories their own reality, their own truth, and likewise their own aesthetic validity. Neurologists are attempting to locate and explain the functions of memory. But medical research cannot provide an adequate description of the images recorded in and altered by the brain in connection with the aesthetic aspects of memory. In the same way that dream literature not only acknowledges the aesthetic quality of dreams, but utilises it for its own purposes, art – specifically painting – could be the appropriate medium for researching the aesthetics of memory. More so than practically any other medium, painting has often rendered the service of calling a specific situation to mind, and art has been utilised in a rather unflattering manner as a mnemonic crutch. Uwe Wittwer has a deep-seated distrust of the picture as representational image. This distrust finds expression in his figurative painting. His painting technique could be described as a test of the motif's strength and resilience. A photographic image always serves as his starting point. Wittwer makes a sketch of this image on canvas or watercolour paper, and during the process of painting it is masked, muted, obscured. Or he manipulates the picture on his computer screen, and the incursions, the removal of colour, the blurring of contours, the cutting away of contextual references act as an assault upon the substance of the motif. Intriguingly, Wittwer works with a limited repertoire of images, returning to the same motifs again and again: a section of floral-patterned wall covering, a juvenile wallpaper design with battleships, a grove of trees along a riverbank, a vase, a chandelier, a simple house. It is as if Wittwer constantly paints the same picture. And yet, it is indeed different every time, for the dissolution of the motif seems to progress from one painting to the next. In the process, internal references within a picture may be eliminated or given a different emphasis. A good example of this is Wittwer's treatment of a chandelier and its shadow. While in earlier, upright-format works a distinct pictorial depth - and consequently a hierarchical type of relationship between the object and its shadow -was perceptible, a new oil painting in oblong format entitled "Interieur" (2000) shows a chandelier and its shadow in what appears to be the same plane. The illusion of three-dimensionality has been abandoned; the chandelier and shadow no longer interact in terms of dependency, one resulting from the other, but as equal compositional elements on the surface of the picture. In this way, relationships between objects are gradually reversed, images or their constituent elements re-evaluated. The same is true of another oil from the year 2000 with warships painted a Delft-blue colour: the noble colour is shipwrecked, so to speak, by virtue of its grotesque intensification upon a dirty grey background. The warships experience the same fate, for although their martial character is minutely portrayed, the porcelain-decor connotations of their colour ultimately expose them as frivolous toys. Wittwer's method of altering motifs to the point of non-identity by darkening, shading, obscuring, and distorting on the one hand, and of amplifying and exaggerating motifs or their parts to the point of grotesqueness on the other hand, corresponds with the way in which the brain deals with memories. And in the same way that the brain relinquishes memories to complete dissolution, Wittwer's painting – and even more so his recent photographic work - comes close to the total dissolution of the motif. In some of the digitally-altered photographs, Wittwer goes so far as to dissolve objects, landscapes, houses or streets into hazy fields of light and dark, shadow and illumination. Here Wittwer positions himself on the borderline between figuration and abstraction. However, he does not head across this line in the direction of abstraction, for - partly through the context of his other pictures - a recoupling with reality, if only a seemingly identifiable reality, takes place time and again. The book and subsequent video "Relative Stille/Relatively Still" – both made in 1999 – tell the story of a trip through a London suburb, although just a few recognisable details give an indication of the location. The identification of place is of some relevance. Yet it does not become significant until one accepts the other aims of the work. They naturally include compositional considerations, but also – and more importantly – the infusion of the pictures with connotative potential. The connection between a river landscape, for instance, and a visual memory also familiar with art historical references, seems as much intended as the evocation of pictures of a country in demise – which could be England, perhaps in the 1980s – but does not have to be. The series "Relative Stille" makes it clearly apparent that Wittwer is concerned with pictures of a separate reality, one that exists underneath the surface of identifiable reality. Both are intertwined. But the laws by which they function also force them apart, just as the memory separates a recollection from the original experience or perception. The laws of aesthetics attain visual form in Uwe Wittwer's pictures. In comprehending them, the way in which one views oneself is inevitably changed. © 2000 Uwe Wittwer, Zürich and Fabian&Calude Walter - Gallery, Bale return to CUE