Klaus Mosettig Sheds New Light on Pollock and Albers
Until the 21st century, the slide projector may have been the most most crucial innovation to teaching and learning about art. After acquiring several second-hand projectors of his own, Klaus Mosettig has revived the obsolete anachronisms through his meticulous graphite pencil drawings. Projecting images, of works by Jackson Pollock and Josef Albers or the Apollo 11 mission, and sometimes eliminating the image entirely, Mosettig creates drawings that comment on surface and incorporate the traces of the projector itself.
A recent solo show at art ON Istanbul included Mosettig’s Pollock works, recreations that maintain the same dimensions but are created through a process that is nearly the opposite of the original’s. In Untitled1950.3/19—a reference to Pollock’s Untitled at MoMA—he carefully crosshatched and mapped out the drips and splashes that were once so freely splashed across a page. In Untitled 1950.2 Recto+Verso—again looking to MoMA’s Untitled—Mosettig created the same work several times, using the projector to flip the composition, creating a mirror image, a literal and figurative reflection on Pollock’s original.
Another series reflects on Albers’ “Homage to the Square” works through boiling down the colorful, hard-edge, geometric compositions to slightly imperfect squares in gradations of graphite. Referring to specific works from MUMOK’s collection, through extracting all trace of color Mosettig upends the works’ significance and calls on the viewer to consider other elements including light and texture.
Mosettig is also known for a series where he creates original compositions through projecting light onto a blank surface. Pradovit RC is a work from this series, where each work’s title refers to the specific projector used in its creation. Picking up on miniscule, often imperceptible flaws of the lens caused by scratches, dust, and fibers, Mosettig creates a sort of fingerprint for the projector, which results in a complex, abstract drawing.
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