René Wirths: One Step Beyond

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In contrast to photorealism, Wirths' painting process does not take place with the help of templates, photos and projectors, but purely as a transfer from three to two dimensions. For Immanuel Kant, the object is a unit separate from the human being and can only be experienced through perception. Edmund Husserl, a good 100 years later, approaches things by believing that he can penetrate their essence through observation. However, his student, Martin Heidegger, clearly sees in this the loss of the "authenticity" of an object, because it would lose its function in the sense of a tool if you only observed it and didn't use it.

It takes weeks, sometimes months, to paint the staged everyday objects in the natural light of his studio, during which not only the lighting conditions in the studio change, but also his mood. According to Henri Bergson, Wirths' objects therefore depict a simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. Space and time penetrate into a multi-perspective, which is the only frontal view that condenses this process. Or in other words: Wirths paints things because they surround us. We live in a material world. While his earlier works against a white background still bear witness to a certain rigor in their pictorial structure, the dynamization of philosophical reflection on the world of things is also evident in Wirths' aesthetics. The colored backgrounds that have prevailed in recent years were a first step his latest works finally dissolve the object itself. In the process of abstraction, Wirths reflects on the interpenetration of appearance and reality – technically and intellectually at the highest level.