What is far away in reality seems optically to come forward. What appears to be the top of a cube turns over before your eyes and suddenly could be the bottom. Despite the honesty with which Kuno Grommers (b. 1946) shows us the construction of his images, including the floor splattered with paint, our powers of perception are repeatedly put to the test.
Whereas photography often brings time and movement to a standstill within the frame of an image, Kuno uses the camera to capture the spatial dynamics of a static image. Abstract geometric shapes and large areas of colour are the starting point for installations that seem to defy the laws of gravity. The optical illusions are the result of a complex play with two important mainstays of photography: light and darkness. These illusions do not involve digital manipulation of any kind, seeing as Kuno’s method of working is analogue.
The manual labour that makes these installations possible involves weeks of preparatory work, during which he carefully designs, measures and builds the composition. Yet it takes only a millisecond to immortalize the result in a photograph. Then he starts the process all over again – always in the same space, which until a short time ago consisted of three walls. When Kuno recently used another room in his house as a studio, he reduced the setting for his work to two walls, and thus with only one corner – a change that inevitably led to different compositions, which with their geometric planes and cleverness, however, always overwhelmingly bear his signature.
The characteristic setting and ever-changing installations are reminiscent of a theatre. No coincidence, since Kuno worked as a theatre photographer for many years. Like a set designer, he has the ability to create an impressive image in a minimalist way. In his earlier work, he mainly used large sheets of coloured paper, pieces of cardboard and sheets of MDF, which he placed in a new perspective. Nowadays, he goes a step further by creating the illusion of space primarily with two-dimensional fields of paint. The geometric colour compositions are reminiscent of abstract painting, which originated in art movements such as De Stijl and colour field painting. Using a fresh, contemporary palette, Kuno Grommers fuses formal abstraction with perceptible reality.