Ralph Fleck - Documentation


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CATALOGUES
1981	"Ralph Fleck: Malerei" (painting) unavailable
1985	"Ralph Fleck: Malerei" (painting)
1987	"Ralph Fleck" ISBN 3-925 881-18-2
1989	"Giverny" (waterlilies)ISBN 3-925 881-25-5
1991	"Frankfurt" unavailable
1991	"Alpen" (alpines) ISBN 3-9801601-4-9 unavailable
1995	"Alpen-Felder-Tulpen" ISBN3-922268-09-0 unavailable
1997	"Städte" (city painting) ISBN 3-922268-13-7
1997	"Reisebilder" (travel images) ISBN 3-9803302-8-1
1999	"Alpen und Felder" (alpines and fields) ISBN 3-922268-18-8 unavailable
1999	"Stilleben" ISBN 3-9803302-9-X
2001	"Portuguese & Tourists" (box of postcards) ISBN 3-00-007397-3
2001	"unterwegs" (on the way) ISBN 3-922268-25-0
2005	„Ralph Fleck: 2001 - 2005” ISBN 3-922268-40-4
2008	„Ralph Fleck” ISBN 1-873184-19-0

GALLERIES

Galerie Baumgarten Freiburg
Kartäuserstr. 32
D-79102 Freiburg
Tel: 0049 (0)761 35298
Fax:0049 (0)761 35212
E-Mail: mail@galerie-baumgarten.de

Galerie Bokhoven Amsterdam
Prinsengracht 154
1016 HA Amsterdam, Nederland
Tel: 0031 (0)20 623 65 98
Fax: 0031 (0)20 623 65 98
E-Mail: galerie.josinebokhoven@hetnet.nl

Purdy / Hicks Gallery London
65 Hopton Street
Bankside
London SE1 9GZ
Tel: 0044 (0)20 74 01 92 29
Fax: 0044 (0)20 74 01 95 95
E-mail: purdyhicks@btconnect.com

Galerie Schwarz
Lange Straße 21
D-17489 Greifswald
Tel: 0049 (0)3834 89 94 48
Fax: 0049 (0)3834 89 94 48
E-mail: schwarzhubert@web.de

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Augustinermuseum Freiburg
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung München
Bayerische Versicherungsbank AG München
Bundesbildungsministerium Bonn
Deutsche Bank London
Deutsche Bank New York
Deutsche Botschaft Brüssel
Deutsche Botschaft Lima
Deutsche Botschaft Windhoek Namibia
Deutsches Fleischermuseum Böblingen
Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart
Goldmann Sachs Frankfurt
Hessische Landesbank London
Hypovereinsbank München
Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum Hagen
Kulturhaus der Bayer AG Leverkusen
Kulturstiftung Celle
Kultusministerium Baden-Württemberg Stuttgart
Kunsthaus Zürich
Kupferstichkabinett Karlsruhe
Land Niedersachsen Hannover
Museum der Stadt Rüsselsheim
Museum Lübeck
Museum Schloß Moyland Bedburg-Hau
Museo Municipal de Arte Contemporáneo Madrid
Royal Bank of Scotland
Sammlung Landesgirokasse Stuttgart
Sprengel Museum Hannover
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Stadt Kornwestheim
Stadt Ravensburg
Städtische Galerie Rastatt
Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim
Städtisches Museum Leverkusen, Schloß Morsbroich
Städtisches Museum Salzgitter
Stadtsparkasse Augsburg
Ulmer Museum
West LB Düsseldorf
Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg
United Nations Den Haag / Washington
ZDF Mainz Lerchenberg

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012	Forum Kunst Rottweil Purdy / Hicks Gallery London Galerie Baumgarten Freiburg
2011	Galerie Josine Bokhoven Amsterdam Ralph Fleck - Bilder aus drei Jahrzehnten Museum des Landkreises Waldshut Schloss Bonndorf
2010	313 ART PROJECT Seoul (Katalog)
2009	Galerie Schwarz Greifswald Marburger Kunstverein
2008	Purdy / Hicks Gallery London
2007	Galerie Baumgarten Freiburg Kunstverein Kirchzarten Purdy / Hicks Gallery London
2006	Galerie Brennecke Berlin
2005	Galerie von Braunbehrens München (Katalog) Ralph Fleck, Deutschlands Galerien zu Gast bei Lamy
2004	Purdy / Hicks Gallery London
2003	Galerie Brennecke Berlin
2002	Galerie Josine Bokhoven Amsterdam Emsdettener Kunstverein Kunstverein Kirchzarten Kunstverein Augsburg (Toskanische Säulenhalle) Galerie Schwind Frankfurt
2001	Städtische Galerie Schwäbisch Hall Galerie von Braunbehrens München Purdy / Hicks Gallery London
2000	Galerie Josine Bokhoven Amsterdam Galerie Wullkopf Lindau Galerie Schwarz Greifswald Galerie Brennecke Berlin Galerie Schwind Frankfurt
1999	Kunstverein Pforzheim Art Frankfurt (Galerie Winkelmann) Galerie Winkelmann Düsseldorf (Katalog) Galerie von Braunbehrens München (Katalog) Purdy / Hicks Gallery London
1998	Kunstverein Kirchzarten Galerie Josine Bokhoven Amsterdam Galerie Brennecke Berlin Galerie Axel Thieme Darmstadt
1997	Galerie Rottloff Karisruhe Galerie von Braunbehrens München (Katalog) Galerie Winkelmann Düsseldorf (Katalog) Galerie Brennecke Berlin
1996	Galerie Thieme + Pohl Darmstadt Galerie Brennecke Berlin
1995	Städtische Kunsthalle Karisruhe ARCO Madrid (Galerie Winkelmann Düsseldorf) Städtische Galerie Tuttlingen Galerie Metta Linde Lübeck Galerie von Braunbehrens München (Katalog)
1994	Städtische Galerie Rastatt Galerie Winkelmann Düsseldorf Galerie Kö 24 Hannover Galerie Axel Thieme Darmstadt
1993	Galerie Hermeyer München Galerie Axel Thieme Darmstadt Kunstverein Kirchzarten
1992	Galerie Thieme Darmstadt Galerie Aphold Freiburg Galerie Regio March-Hugstetten Transart Exhibitions Köin
1991	Galerie Hermeyer München Artothek München Galerie im Kornhauskeller Ulm Kunst- und Kunstgewerbeverein Pforzheim Galerie Fahlbusch Mannheim Galerie Schindler Zermatt (Katalog)
1990	Galerie Wentzel Köin Galerie Dr. Kristine Oevermann Frankfurt Galerie Axel Thieme Darmstadt Galerie Schloss Mochental
1989	Galerie Fahlbusch Mannheim Galerie Hermeyer München (Katalog) Städtische Galerie Donaueschingen
1988	Galerie Wentzel Köin Galerie Kö 24 Hannover Kunstverein Kirchzarten
1987	Frankfurter Aufbau AG (Katalog) Galerie Eberwein Freiburg Galerie Fahlbusch Mannheirn (Katalog) Galerie Hermeyer München
1986	Galerie Eberwein Freiburg Galerie Kö 24 Hannover Kunstforum Schramberg Art Cologne (Galerie Hermeyer)
1985	Galerie Hermeyer München (Katalog) Galerie Fahlbusch Ludwigshafen
1984	Galerie Metta Linde Lübeck Städtische Galerie Tuttlingen Galerie Eberwein Freiburg Galerie Dr. Kristine Oevermann Frankfurt Galerie Landesgirokasse Stuttgart
1983	Galerie am Haagtor Tübingen Galerie Suzanne Fischer Baden-Baden
1982	Galerie Art in Progress Düsseldorf Galerie Hermeyer München Städtische Galerie Ravensburg Galerie Fahlbusch Ludwigshafen
1981	Kunstverein Freiburg Galerie der Stadt Kornwestheim
1980	Galerie Hermeyer München Akademie der bild. Künste Karlsruhe (Katalog) Galerie Dr. Kristine Oevermann Frankfurt
1978	Galerie Eberwein Freiburg Galerie Apostroph Stuttgart Galerie Kirschgarten Mainz
1977	Galerie Edition Schneider Freiburg

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2011	„PRIVATE PASSIONS - Sammeln in Mannheim” Kunsthalle Mannheim „Extrem süß!” Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe - Junge Kunsthalle „Schwarzwald - Zwischen Idylle und Provinzialität” kunst raum rottweil museum der gegenwart im Dominikanermuseum Rottweil „Unser Schwarzwald - Romantik und Wirklichkeit” Augustinermuseum Freiburg „Die vier Elemente in der Kunst Feuer Wasser Erde Luft” Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe „FORTUNA” Galerie E105 GmbH Berlin
2010	Wanderausstellung „Positionen: Gegenständliche Kunst heute” Museum des Landkreises Waldshut - Schloss Bonndorf/Städtische Galerie Fähre Bad Saulgau „Gratwanderung” Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg e.V. KUNST_WERK_BUCH Galerie Kasten Mannheim
2009	„Ralph Fleck en zijn studenten Galerie Josine Bokhoven Amsterdam
2008	„Comme des bêtes/ Ours, chat, cochon & Cie” Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne
2007	"Mit den Händen sehen" Marburger Kunstverein/Deutsche Blindenstudienanstalt Marburg
2006	Ralph Fleck en zijn studenten Galerie Josine Bokhoven Amsterdam
2005	"London and its Painters" Purdy/Hicks Gallery London
2004	"Europe in Art" Wanderausstellung der HVB Group Kunsthaus Hamburg, Nationalgalerie Warschau, Museum of Contemporary Art Bukarest, Kloster Stams Tirol, Galerie Manes, Prag, Budapest, Nationale Kunstgalerie Sofia
2003	"Seascapes in confrontation" - Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende (Katalog) "KUNST auf REZEPT" Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité "Het moderne landschap" KCB Kunstenaarscentrum Bergen NL Purdy/Hicks Gallery Summer Exhibition London Galería d'Art Kunstmann, Summer Exhibition, Santanyi Mallorca
2002	Purdy/Hicks Gallery Summer Exhibition London "Der Berg" Heidelberger Kunstverein
2000	Galeria d'Art Dr.Joanna Kunstmann Santanyi-Mallorca "Totale" Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg "Gartenlust" Galerie Norbert Ebert Darmstadt Art Contemporain du Baden-Wurttemberg en Alsace
1999	"Gärten und Parks - in der Malerei von Renoir bis heute" Galerie Schloss Mochenthal
1998	"Die Würde der Dinge" Kreissparkasse Esslingen-Nürtingen
1997	"Landschaften" Galerie von Braunbehrens München "Stilleben heute" Galerie Baumgarten Freiburg
1995	"Tag um Tag = 30 Jahre Klasse Peter Dreher" Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg / Kunstverein Freiburg
1994	"Nationale der Zeichnnung" Toskanische Säulenhalle Augsburg Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
1991	"Landschaften" Kulturbahnhof Eller, Düsseldorf
1987	"Malerei 80 - 86" Kunstverein Augsburg "Standort" Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt / Pawilon Wystawowy Krakau "Villa Massimo 84 - 86" Kunsthalle Darmstadt
1985	Ausstellung Villa Massimo Rom
1984	"Deutsche Landschaft heute" Berlin / Hannover / Emden "Kunstlandschaft Bundesrepublik" Kunstverein Hannover Wanderausstellung BDI Singapur / Tokyo
1983	"Landschaften und Ansichten" Sammlung Museum Schloss Morsbrolch Leverkusen Forum junger Kunst Stuttgart / Baden-Baden / Mannheim "25 junge deutsche Maler" Ljubljana / Lisboa / Porto
1982	Tendenzen 82 Ulmer Museum
1981	Aspekte der Malerei der Gegenwart I Galerie Kröner Schloss Rimsingen Der grüne Salon Galerie Suzanne Fischer Baden-Baden Bewerbungen Rom-Stipendium Kunsthaus Hamburg
1980	Kunsthalle Baden-Baden Gesellschaft Freunde junger Kunst Wanderausstellung "Landschaften" Kulturkreis BDI Alexandria-Kairo-Amman-Beirut-Damaskus
1979	Forum junger Kunst Stuttgart "Zeichnungen 5" Städtisches Museum Leverkusen
1978	"Ars Viva" Kunsthalle Tübingen / Bayer Haus Leverkusen "Realität der Farbe" Galerie Art in Progress Düsseldorf
1977	Kunstpreis "Junger Westen" Recklinghausen "Das gro¤e Format" Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
1975	Forum junger Kunst Recklinghausen

Hans-Joachim Müller
"Informel with Order"

Frankfurt? No, he does not have a particular, particularly close relationship to this city. Dwell there? May be yes, may also be no. Well, he has found memories of this city. On a foggy morning, on a snowy day, this, that or the other skyscraper. At any rate, Frankfurt means to him a strong sensual stimulation, if not he wouldn't have been able to paint it.

It is not much; we get to know by the painter Ralph Fleck about his pictural ideas. He is more interested in painting itself than in the objects of his painting. Out of this subject you might create anything. "City" is - to him as a painter - a very good occasion. No more, no less.

Just in 1987 Ralph Fleck had dealt with Frankfurt in painting. He took photographs, he gathered, observed, forgot, invented. His kind of research is not the one of a journalist, it does not aim for truth (in the sense of objectivity). Ralph Fleck demonstrates himself in all his paintings as someone retinal infected, as an active victim of silent and loud sensations who has to realize his sensations. His city-paintings thus do not depict the town, do not point to topographical, historical, essential or characteristical interests. They are impressions only, optical experiences, emerging from the painter's condensed space of experience; sensual induction helps the painter again and again to stand the provocation of an empty sheet or a white canvas.

Painting to Ralph Fleck is absolutely essential. When he is painting, he feels satisfied or is at odds with himself. A day he has passed in his studio not having achieved a veritable pictural result has not been a successful day, and this dissatisfaction can actually only be repaired in front of the canvas. All these signs indicate a superior impulse, give the profile of desire.

It would be wrong to suppose Ralph Fleck to feel passion only and exclusively for one metropolis. There is something strange about the economy of his energies. Stocks of desire and curiosity, evocating long series of subjects seem almost mysteriously inexhaustible. Again and again themes may be recalled, seeming fresh after months, either years. This means: Fleck does never take series to final completement, but leads them to cross each other; he retakes subjects getting newly inspired, excited, calmed. It has much to do with energetic impulses, with liberty and with decisions happening very fast, with what is happening in his extremely vivid studio - but absolutely not due to strategy, mechanics and faith to conception.

The aerial view of a city and after that, probably the Matterhorn. A town in ruins and in between a landscape. Bridges crossing a river in quick succession with a "nature morte" with dead dolphins. Manhattan's skyline and a pan over the eighth arrondissement of Paris. How to make any sense of it? Better not even think about it.

Nothing seems to be impossible or excluded in this eruptively increasing oeuvre, but not even to be foreseen or logical. Fleck fixes grates onto his papers and canvases with broad dynamic or slowly drawn brushstrokes, the images get transformed directly in his head into prospering color-substance. Mixtures of colored stuff with smooth pulsating or sclerotic zones in which the eye, daring to come closer and closer, may get lost, loose itself, risks to become immersed in. Some steps of distance to the picture help to clear the impression, help to obtain a general idea, untie the objects out of the spectral stuff. It is just there the painter himself feels at his aim: at the small ridge between description and abstraction. Ralph Fleck is not a "realist" in the naive creed that painting should work as mimetic reproduction, if not people (we already miss them in Fleck's paintings), than almost of the world and the appearing subjects of world. On the other hand Ralph Fleck does not regard himself as a painting discoverer of the transcendent - possibly searching for secret topics far away from visible reality. "Informel with order" he himself claims the tightrope act, leading him on is way from the one aspect in determination of painting to the opposite one and afterwards back again

There is no way out that beyond the hot coloristic lava this painter expulses without interruption, subjects almost have to dissolve. And that the first compelling impression we get from his paintings is the one of almost color, throwing up to landscapelike reliefs. But it is also right that Fleck does not use his pictural ideas just as an impulse for processual painting. The motive itself keeps to be the true motif that makes him paint. And the irritation that makes the oeuvre seem programmatically trackless results from the painter's relation to the reality of life. Ralph Fleck's painting reflects this actual sensation that the always-claimed order of things has become obsolete. The painter in the postidealistic epoch discovers to be homeless and uprooted in a world of things and experiences without hierarchical order, quality or priority. And without any chance to turn back to a metaphysical sense of security which could imagine a condensed reason behind things and relations. Things are what they seem. Appearance is already everything. And "appearance" is the central theme in Ralph Fleck's painting. The bombing of Frankfurt thus is not meant as a code, the painting transmits no political statement.

In this century comes true in triumphant manner what was Walter Benjamin's vision: reality of life has nearly disappeared behind its total reproduction. And consequently the point of departure in Fleck's painting is this technical epidermis. Not only memorating photography, also minimalisation or monumentalisation in the chosen details follow the logic rules of zooming optics - will mean, everything is due to technical viewing and not to his desire for the sublime or pathos. Man, in the mass-media society, find himself completely surrounded by images, and with his generation Ralph Fleck has become too sceptical to believe in a truth promised behind those images transferred by a technical mediated world. He prefers to substitute the place in front of the narrowly closed settings by reproduced reality. By his own, strong self-confident pictures.

The author is editor at the Baseler Zeitung and wrote this text on the occasion of an exhibition of Ralph Fleck's "Frankfurt-pictures" in September 1987.

Lothar Romain
The Structure of Colour

If the arty set calls somebody a "Malschwein", a "painting pig", it is more an endearment or an expression of admiration than anything else. It is meant to describe an artist who fights, energetically and obsessedly, again and again the everlasting fight with paint as materials and its colour-quality. It seems as if he couldn't pile enough of it on the canvas, scratch it off again, build it up once more, unable to bear the slightest smoothness at the canvas' surface. The technical term for that is paste painting, but it tells us very little about the virtually existential struggle, performed under great physical effort aimed at an assessment of the limits of the weight-bearing capacity of the canvas and the layer-building capacity of the paint to a point where their evoking and structuring powers change completely to mere material.

Ralph Fleck is such a "painting pig", but by no means a fetishist who revels in the paint "mash", but somebody who tries again and again with hearty courage and cool reason the link between structure and colour, and who looks for the point in time when form changes to colour structure and colour structure to painting form. His pictures - and this applies to the panoramic views of cities and sceneries as well as to the close focusing on plants - live from two possible ways of observation. Closeness and distance are for the painting itself and for viewing it later of decisive importance. The individual distance from the canvas causes a different manifestation of the picture and sets the degree of abstraction for those generally representational scenarios.

All this is primarily about a visual experience, which had been utilized repeatedly for painting purposes. With greater distance things get clearer and change with increasing closeness to structural details. This is shown to the extreme in Fleck's paintings of plants and details of fields. Here the painter succumbs entirely to the close view and is focused on the colour experience, which distances itself increasingly from the encircling, crowding, sketchy form and concentrates on the colour, which turns itself into form. And here, in return, the observer recognizes the picturereleasing subject only from the distance, approaching it more closely he virtually dives down until all guidance through form and structure is disbanded. But those experiences can be applied to the distant views of cities and sceneries as well, which convey a similar discovery. What seems to be a seemingly realistic portrait of a city or a landscape proves to be, when watched from a closer distance, as the colourstructuring analysis of the formal image and its implied emotional values.

The basis of Ralph Fleck's work is representational. For him, distance is not just an approach to the subject but a graduation of the emotional inner relationship, which only on the face of it leads to totally different picture results. When he watches from a semidistance, even if his eyes or the camera - often his "notebook" - are rather close to the objects, the pasty, blotchy details of the picture appear as a diversity of form and structure, which is, as it shows stems, petals, nevertheless defined as a representational subject. But the closer he gets to the subject, the more the pictureevoking, representational outlines vanish in exchange of a, all-over impression, which transforms organic, individual forms into the structure of the complete picture. This is ruled by the rhythm of the paint-application, from the change between colour dots and blotches, which come in layers, sometimes almost piled up and create an additional surface movement, raised in relief, and by the contrasting and complementary colours.

The onlooker, though, goes through a reverse process of reception. What seems to be at first glance like a strongly coloured, abstract composition, proves to be from a distance a picturesque transformation of flower- and vegetable fields, animated scenarios of mostly warm red and gold shades, which seem even more luminous through sprinklings of their complementary colours or set each other favourably off in a dialogue of red and yellow orange, yellow and green. The painter has, for the sake of this colour-happening, removed much of the distance to his subject, which means that he doesn't stand in front of a landscape anymore, which is structured by fields with different vegetation, but has "zoomed" a detail so closely that all contours and orientation marks vanish and only the inner motion of the colours remain.

One can't help thinking of Monet, as Fleck stands here in the illustrious tradition of 20th century painting, which is derived from the master of the "water lilies" and influenced not just the European, but the New York School as well. This doesn't refer to the technique, where Monet moves to more extensive surface area over the years, but the principle of the late Monet to change the formerly three-dimensional picture with its perspective into a disorientated colour structure without front and back, above and below are meaningless and an imaginary, incessantly changing space can be only derived from the mutual togetherness of warm and cold colours. Fleck "translated" this into his own language, which lends a three-dimensional quality to the brush-strokes and colour dots and to the colour via its substance its own unique form and structure. The rich, pasty application becomes the inner structure of the painting, but never totally letting its representational origin out of sight.

It was Informel, more precisely action painting, that for the first time so consequently has set free colour to find it's own structure and form through turning it into a spontaneous gesture. To save such a gesture from becoming too vague it was frequently - see Emil Schumacher - deliberately held back by the cumbersomeness of the thick paint mash. In Fleck's work 8 this procedure occurs as a quotation i.e. not a spontaneous, but an emphasized nevertheless self-conscious and controlled application of paint, which derives its intensity, density, three-dimensional quality and restriction from the given subject and not from the substance of the subconscious.

Wolfgang Längsfeld describes Ralph Fleck as a "painter of analysis and synthesis. A painter of the physically explorable reality, the explorations of which he displays as a source for knowledge by delving passionately into its structures as far as they are conveyable to the painter." Passion is all over his pictures - sometimes dramatically dedicated to the entity, sometimes rather brittle already in the beginning, but it is controlled, not succumbing to the mere status quo or visual attractions. In spite of all that it powerfully fights for restraint. "To perform art", as Frank Auerbach, another master of thick paste painting, put it, "means to create order out of chaos." But such order, and that applies to Ralph Fleck's pictures as well, is not aiming at a final status, a termination, but is, from his subjects and technique one of progress, of action, of (de)formation, to prevent fixing and settling of stillness and self-satisfaction. That helps the pictures to acquire their restrained ferocity, beauty and at the same time sets a distance so they may evoke more than just revelry.

The landscapes and city views are only outwardly strangers to that, as outlined above. They are, in fact, reversals of that procedure. They are about the colour structure of the distance, how from the distance that realizes the representational guideline still pictorial harmony evolves. Like hardly any other painter, Ralph Fleck has a lot of pictures over many years - on Paris alone there are almost 500 - dedicated to the "City" topic. A difficult venture, as a look at the second half of the last century proves. For the majority of painters this seemed to be doomed to failure. With the exception of Pop Art, which was mainly interested in the image of the urban consumption circle, though, painting showed little interest in metropoles, although their streets and interior views played such an important part from the beginning of the Modern Arts to Expressionism. Only with the advent of the 'New Wild Ones' and their neo-expressionist painting subjects like that could be found again, the urban ambience as place and expression for a new awareness of life, a metaphor for boisterousness and a passionate desire for life, a Moloch of the spirit of the age. The 'New Wild Ones' found in the urban architecture the static backdrop for the restlessness of the traffic and one's own doings and in the pubs and taverns the appropriate place for the pictures of nocturnal booze-ups and at the same time fear of any form of intimacy. No doubt all this separated the pictures from their expressionist ancestors with their intoxication with cities and at the same time bathos of anxiety, but they found their limitations at the objective boundlessness of the Moloch called Megapolis, to which they had nothing to answer back but their awareness of life.

Ralph Fleck does not belong to the circle of the neoexpressionists, even though his painting doesn't repress its expressive qualities. They are for the artist an undeniable part, but not the essence of his work. This becomes clear in his handling of the urban architecture. Seen from a distance, he avoids any insight into their core. He isn't interested in any snapshots, even if the broad avenues and streets show some vehicles and even pedestrians. But even those are, compared with the daily chaos on the streets of the metropoles, only sparse. His city views are those of a view from above, which are removed from noise, but are dedicated to the laying out of the city and its various architectural conditions.

The metropoles of Paris, New York, Lisbon or Madrid are shown as sometimes grave, sometimes light structures of buildings with the streets as blood vessels. The vertical dominates, diagonally or crosswise cut through by streets as guidelines for the directions of the architectural frontages and roofs. If the close-ups of flowers and field details show a dynamic, all forms embracing rhythm, the pictures of cities show more a static structure, the severity of the lines of the buildings, the formality of the architecture. This is not glossed over by impressionist means, but shown rather coolly and through close scrutiny. The artificial world, like the organic one, has its own structural principles, but it is, different from the latter, not subject to quick changes, but is, in spite of all changes over the centuries, ever trusting for a newly thought period of time.

His painting wouldn't be more but an illustrative snapshot, wouldn't Ralph Fleck, although he strictly observes the guidelines, here too create an all-over structure of the application of paint. The closer one gets to the pictures, the more dominant Fleck's paste painting becomes, the significant penetration of the scenic guidelines with the help of the multi-layered paint application. By his chosen details he sticks to the vertical and diagonal lines, but the application of the paint glosses over the mere addition of buildings and their higgledy-piggledy structure to achieve an illustrative painting culture. Only this changes the detail into a pars pro toto, it closes up what would otherwise remain a mere conglomerate, in spite of all town planning. A photographic image, even if carefully selected, will remain an image of the moment, of an episode, which tells about a specific situation at a specific point in time. Ralph Fleck's painting sheds those random moments and creates a pictorial finality, which is derived from the all-embracing structure of the paintings. It has the aura of permanence, albeit a vibrant one, proven by the application of the paint and the surface of the painting. But that is why it can perform according to the guidelines of the city sceneries, so that it, with its own means of colouring, gives itself its own form of permanence, a permanence, which corresponds with the similar claim of permanence of the architectural guidelines, yet relativizes it at the same time by confronting it with a structuring medium and instrument as a pictorial actuality, which is, in fact, non-existing in reality.

The landscapes should be seen in a similar way. Here, too, the distance created from a higher perspective as a contrast to the nearness of the close-ups of those details of fields and pictures of flowers. Landscape and city as pars pro toto, the primary status quo of the divide of earth and sky, mostly showing wide open spaces with an unapproachable foreground because of the view from above, no idyllic, but rather barren landscapes, desert, volcanoes' craters, mountains on the horizon. The observer is not invited to settle here or even just to stay for a while. Any attempt to approach will fail because he is, similar to the city paintings, kept at a distance by the pasty structure of the paint. The illusion of the familiar is destroyed by the individual pictorial characteristics. But the latter - and that makes Ralph Fleck's work so special - is not a means of mere alienation, but the pictures' own truth, which is derived from this special way of painting, such a truth, which only art can show, the entirety as structure and possibility, which we have, as a concept, in reality and fact, lost long ago.

Wilfried Wang
Portraits of Cities - Between estrangement and recognition

To view Ralph Fleck's paintings of cities without reference to the actual location could initiate a reaction of déja-vu in a widely-travelled onlooker: Of course, that is Rome as one knows it, hot in the light of the late afternoon; certainly, that is London, grey at any time of a normal day in the early autumn; Madrid with the Avenidas wedged between the medieval quarters; similarly Paris with Haussmann's Boulevards in stark contrast to the naturally evolved layout of the pre-Enlightenment period; or New York with its lithic skyscrapers, which, when observed from a distance, appear as a grid, analogous to the rational ground plan of the city. The paintings are composed in such a manner as to individually provide sufficient references to the widely-travelled beholder while one hint in a painting of a series is sometimes enough to explain the gradually recognizable physiognomy of the respective city.

Within the series of the most recent years there are developmental sequences of paintings ranging from the more obvious to the more abstract. It is as if the painter seems to represent to himself and the beholder how the historical development of painting contains the search for the fundamental. From this vantage point, Fleck's choice of the segment of a city's view is decisive: the larger the format and the more distinctive the segment, the easier the recognition of the city in question. Sometimes very well known buildings are part of the paintings, sometimes topographic elements, like rivers, parks or bridges, particular to a specific city are included. In this regard, the series aim at the phenomenon of estrangement by the single painting as well as at the phenomenon of recognition of city structures as a result of viewing entire sequences (specifically in New York paintings).

In this thematic field between estrangement and recognition the painter Ralph Fleck has been able to unfold. Brush stroke and paint mixture are placed with such precision that they become part of this balancing act. The mixture of paint implies surface structures like window frames or facade ornamentation. Fleck's mastery of this technique is in accordance with the observations of Marco Boschini regarding the subject of pittoresco (La carta del navegar pitoresco, Venice 1660). Fleck pursues neither the absolutely exact geometrical alignment, nor the separation of colour fields or even seamless transitions from light to dark; on the contrary, he is in search of convincing ambiences that are created by well-applied paints. Naturally, the distance to the painting plays an important role in the phenomenon of the mixed perception of colour fields.

In this context, the fixing of the focus is as important as the portrayal of the objects within the image segment. With a few exceptions, most portraits of cities are taken from the air. The aerial view has had a fascination for the beholder right from the beginning of this technique. Just think of the first passengers of hotair balloons of the 18th century or of the Zeppelin. Given the circumspection of the relatively slow travelling speeds of older means of transport, the beholder can watch to his heart's desire. Airplanes only permit a brief moment of awe before the city en miniature vanishes. Fleck's portraits of cities allow the awe and the fascination of beholding to linger. In one case, there is the barely perceivable change of light (consider for instance Monet's studies on light), in another case, the mosaic-like accumulation of paint to form a hieroglyph of a city, and again and again the density of sun-lit and shaded sides of buildings created by the telephoto lens.

Fleck rarely paints people, vehicles or other signs of urban civilisation. In some paintings an impression is created as if a city were something that had always been there, akin to a geological structure seen from above. This estranged, distanced focus characterizes Fleck's portraits of cities. Fleck not merely positions himself in an unusual position with the help of contemporary optical means, but he puts himself and the beholder of the painting into an elevated vantage point. One looks down on a city as if it had always been there, like a natural phenomenon. The city that is thus portrayed seems to know neither style nor time.

Had it still been the case with Caspar David Friedrich that the beholder of a scenery was integrated into the painting in the manner of the reader of a novel (Morgen im Riesengebirge, 1810/1811; Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, around 1818; or Kreidefelsen auf Rügen, around 1818), then the beholder's awareness becomes objectified in Ralph Fleck's paintings through his point of view. The painting's composition lets the buildings appear as orthogonal surfaces, there are no distorted verticals are unknown. Therefore the buildings look that more static, like geological sedentary entities. At the extreme ends of image segments - from the general view to the close-ups - the colour surfaces become more and more abstract, whereas with the more detailed views the impression of the casual adherence to factually identifiable parts prevails.

The maintenance of verticality in relation to the representation of the buildings pays tribute to the beholder's anticipation and in this respect Fleck's paintings compete with photography. It is true that telephoto- lenses and rectifying mechanisms of some lenses are responsible for modern viewing habits, but even the ancient Egyptian or classical Roman representations refused to allow vertical lines to become distorted. Giotto and his contemporaries equally adhered rigidly to this principle. In this way the structural- static spirit of the building was represented. Tiepolo's ceiling paintings the inclined verticals are, of course, part of the trompe l'oeil effect. But it was only with the beginning of photography that the dynamism of space and form is brought into the consciousness of the public. Aerial photographs taken by non-rectified lenses generally show inclined verticals. This effect is accepted by the beholder as it is immanently connected to the seeming reality of photography. Fleck's portraits of cities with their absolute verticals are therefore more than the fulfilment of an expectation, they are a critique of photography.

By consistently correcting the inclined verticals, some paintings (e.g. those of New York) reveal a degree of abstraction visible in Mondrian's series of trees, which was painted around 1912. Fleck's New York abstractions are of a haptic nature in comparison to, for example, Mondrian's late work Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942-1943), which is a conceptual abstraction of the Broadway in spite of its identifiable, organic layout.

Extensive, almost monochrome surfaces in Fleck's portraits of cities relate to his interest for the sublime, something that was already discernible in his paintings of the Alps. A tall, black skyscraper in the foreground of a painting, dominating the whole canvas surface symbolizes for Fleck not just the longing for a privileged view but expresses the skyscraper's authoritarian character. Those vertical studies of the Paris office district of La DÈfense show deliberately composed segments of high-rise buildings, seemingly set to oust the more traditional parts of the city, thus revealing the terrifying side of the sublime, as described by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London 1757): "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. (...) Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endured with greatness of dimension or not. (...) Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. (...) A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime than an inclined plane (...)" (II. part, II. and chapter VII).

Fleck's paintings reflect different moods. Each city portrait, in spite of its apparent concern for the factually correct light or for the structure of buildings, is about ambience. Fleck's portraits of cities are not primarily about the segment as pars pro toto in a morphological sense, but to represent a fragment in lieu of an experience of the quality of an entire city in the way that it is seen in different seasons and climates. For this reason Fleck rarely paints panoramic views, as they give a deceiving impression of completeness, putting the beholder into a position, that leads him to the conclusion of having comprehended everything thanks to the apparent overall view. The panorama, a means of representation of the early Enlightenment, implies omniscience, certainty, completeness. The segment, in the same way as the panorama is, strictly speaking, just another detail, emphasizes the partial, the limited, the concentration on something specific.

Were the panoramic view considered the symphony of painting, the segment could then be regarded as chamber music, were not Fleck's points of view in relation to his city portraits located in the air, which, together with the occasional dramatic composition, pays tribute to the sublime. This apparent contradiction within the analogy, however, shows the intensity with which Fleck unites the choice of topic, point of view, composition and means of representation.

If Fleck's scenic paintings of the Alps or the sea are stormy, roaring, misty, that is to say dramatic, then his urban paintings seem to be frequently passive in the beholder's eye. The secure distance, with which the city fragments are viewed, enhances the impression of tranquillity. Only in those paintings, in which abstracted surfaces of paint dominate, a tension is established that beyond the control of paint and brushwork reflects the spirit of a city.

Once again, Fleck's portraits of cities rarely make use of the panorama; instead they are occasionally developed as a series. These series sometimes range from more obvious, discernible motives to more abstract painterly topics. Only the entire collection of urban paintings reveals Ralph Fleck's conceptual point of view. Thus understood, this "collection" of city portraits is a meta-panorama, a mosaic, constituting a whole document from apparently unrelated bits and pieces. Such a document records the physiognomic qualities of an individual city without paying attention to its socio-cultural questions or problems. Only once, in his series of the destruction of Germany (see the catalogue Städte, 1997) Fleck allowed himself to show melancholy, reproach or criticism. They were constructed at normal street level of a pedestrian.

The aerial perspectives of cities do not allow individual human fates to come close to the beholder, they do not refer to ecological challenges, they do not identify urban planning blunders. The cities are just themselves. Fleck's portraits of cities concentrate on the phenomenon of their construction, on the characteristics that result from minor changes in formal and spatial structure. To express these qualities in the medium of paint is, in view of the many media that already deal with urban problems, enough of an ambitious goal. At a time, in which cultural and political borders are vanishing, the intensity with which Ralph Fleck traces the qualities of respective cities in his paintings is probably the essence to which an artist should wisely confine himself.

Ralph Fleck, Professor for Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg