Taking Pictures at Their Word

He has actually always worked with text, Franz Türtscher tells me. He was interested in the formal and aesthetic aspects of typography: texts that form drawings, words as “positive stimulants” that one can spend a longer time reflecting on, the use of Vorarlberg dialects as a reference to his native Austrian province and in general in relation to language as a feature that provides a sense of identity.

For several centuries, written characters have been used as images, symbols, signs, and material in poetry as well as in the visual arts. Drawing inspiration from individual letters, words, aphorisms, or literary texts has long been part of the tradition of our visual culture, and in the spectrum of contemporary art, this means giving form to the written language and thus opening up new symbiotic levels of meaning.

In the form of collage-like works, Türtscher uses the combination of individual words such as “KUNST FORM POESIE” (“Art form poetry”) or “VISION STRESS EMOTION” to achieve fascinating structures that in their pictorial formation always contain often unexpected aesthetic potential. Through the absence of the spaces that customarily separate letters from each other visibly in a printed text, the typography in the images sometimes blends together into heterogeneous fields. Through this stratagem, individual words can be deciphered only upon closer examination. The letters positioned directly next to or above one other are transformed into a web of lines that give rise to an overall motif. Writing manifested as pictures.

As a basic medium of our time, the written word serves Türtscher as a tool for working out connections between perception and communication, reading and seeing in his “Schrift – Bilder” (“Writing – Pictures”). The artist uses words as raw material, as building blocks preserved with acrylic paint on canvas that he can always shape into new structural orders. Here, he acts in a similarly programmatic way as in some of his painting series: He initially places two or three colour fields on the white canvas, with the width of the selected masking tape defining the distance to the coming geometric figures, which for their part react as additional segments to the areas already painted. It is an intuitive way of working that allows planned chance to play a role in the process.

In the case of the “Schrift – Bilder”, one word reacts to the next, and the result is the development of multifaceted vantage points, reference systems, and constellations. Content-related and formal logics invite the viewers to form their own individual associations and interpretations. Only rarely does Türtscher formulate short, coherent series of words, such as “ALLE RICHTUNGEN” (“In all directions”) and “AUF AUGENHOEHE” (“At eye level”), or he uses the common Vorarlberg phrase “NET LUGG LO” (“Don’t give up” or “Don’t let up”), which read like commentaries on his own work, on his own state of mind, or on issues related to politics or society.

Generally, the artist strings together shorter or longer series of words without periods or commas, creating manifold semantic combinations. Sometimes it is “tercets” on square canvases that sometimes also stand in the space in the form of sculptures as “word bodies” under the title “SCHRIFT – WÜRFEL” (“Writing cubes”). Other times, module-like canvases positioned one above another, each of whose space is filled with one word, make up multi-part works whose vertical extension could theoretically be continued upward or downward indefinitely. On one hand, the word—painted in block letters—acts here as a conveyor of content; on the other, it also serves as a graphic or constructive element that provides a framework to hold the image that develops from it. In this sense, “INTUITION KUNST” (“Intuition art”), for example, refers to recognition, imagination, and a fleeting idea. “OPTION ILLUSION” is a reference to the three-dimensional, to suggestion and optical illusion—subjects that are fundamentally inherent to art. “JETZT ZEIT JETZT” (“Now time now”) perhaps alludes to the processual and the aspect of all things temporal that shape our lives. Living in the here and now: this deeply Buddhist thought resonates in Türtscher’s short sentence—a plea for directing one’s gaze to the important things in life, for regarding the present moment as valuable and enjoying it?

In the exhibition context, the “Schrift – Bilder”, do not, as one might think, stand in isolation. Treating them as an autonomous counterpart to other series of works, the artist brings about new perspectives and frames of reference in their interaction with each other. In this way, Türtscher’s works sharpen our senses for the areas between what we perceive visually and what is formulated in writing. In some cases, writing is used as a means of narration, while in others, legibility and the comprehension of the content take a back seat, or the text components test the boundaries of the imaginary or real space.

Türtscher is aware that our lives are dominated by images and graphic characters. Even on remote hiking paths in seemingly pristine nature, we encounter symbols, pictographs, and written notices that provide orientation and show us in which direction the path continues. When art combines the flood of media imagery of our time with the written word, what results—from a very pragmatic perspective—is the processing and proliferation of emotions and information. One of Franz Türtscher’s works bears the statement “KUNST MOTIVIERT” (“Art motivates”). We would do well to take his “Schrift – Bilder” at their word.

Hartwig Knack, October 2024