this accompanying exhibition letter is not educational, revealing, rather it is about hiding.
mechtild frisch hides behind her “painting pieces”, the colors she wants to touch, disappears behind them, holding the piece in front of herself, she becomes invisible to us; only she can see something through these peepholes, something that we don't see. here she plays with the photographer wolfgang lukowski, who sees through this process, captures the painting, reveals the invisible mechtild behind it, shows her hands holding the painting almost clearly, very clearly.
mechtild frisch has been doing this in all her monochrome painting pieces since the 1960s, takes the raw cardboard packaging tubes into which she has to crawl to penetrate them from the inside, the protective cardboard box for the washing machine, which is a nuisance when it gets in the way, if mechtild does not declare it to be the bearer of her painting, crawls into it, stabs and drills, is happy that it is there.
mechtild frisch takes the coarse material, such as the unprinted tube, or the protective inner cardboard, the large plates, these things give the painting the external shape, which she pierces with countless holes, unsystematically, until the future painting almost loses its stiffness, rigidity. then, after these games of hide-and-seek, the experienced and sensitive painter comes to the fore, the one who paints this torn body inside and out in many layers, stabilizing the painting piece. she does not use the "beautiful" side, perhaps with advertising or political slogans, she does not care, she knows what is printed and knows that others have already done this and will do so. she knows that it is not suitable for her, and that she does not want to include it in her work. our words are very precise here, touch, show, hold on, pierce, see through, capture in many layers, enlighten, disclose, treat....
pavel hayek is fascinated by the possibilities of transferring one medium into the other. listening to music, knowing that this momentary uniqueness can be recorded permanently in notation, seeing music as writing and as uniqueness to reproduce, to publish, later, perhaps after centuries, to be able to play again, to be able to hear again, loud and quiet, rapidly or gently. also imagining music, noting it down in writing, without having to play it yourself.
pavel hayek listens to the music of franz liszt, he sees the notation on the paper, chooses a line for his later picture, maybe he photographs the line, chooses a method to digitize it and now have it as material for his experiments on screen, such as doublings, angular shifts, compressions, enlargements. many methods unknown to me. if he is satisfied, he enlarges what has been achieved and transfers it to a large film for processing, which in turn is placed on a plate or the canvas and he begins his work. through the identification of innumerable points, which he marks, borders, or initially leaves as empty areas, points, smallest rectangles, empty holes that, when painted, become full black dots. a musical notation that cannot be converted into sounds, but forms a visible aesthetic structure. this transformation of a logical structure created by humans for other purposes through digitization and processing into a new, only visual, aesthetic structure is his concept.
pavel hayek's art appears to be very clear, only surprising, but without hiding. hiding, the role reversal can be seen here in the trio of the people involved, the painter working with his hands hides his hands behind his body, the speaker speaks freely, holds what may have been painstakingly worked out in his head, his notes, like a musical instrument with his hands, the 10 visible fingers, the composer is missing.
