A collaboration.
Analogue works by Bertram Schrettl aka Bertram Schrecklich digitally edited.
"The works are part of my most recent series, "What Remains Is Nothing, for No One," which I created in the fall of 2020 during the second COVID-19 lockdown.
A pivotal experience that significantly influenced the creation of these images occurred on a sunny autumn day. I was walking home on foot as the sun slowly set behind a nearby mountain, tinting the slightly cloudy sky with a range of soft colors. From yolk-yellow to golden yellow, orange, pink, rose, light blue, and lilac, the sky glowed while the silhouettes of buildings stood out darkly in front of it. Completely devoid of living beings, the scene exuded a peaceful, almost reverent atmosphere. It was a scene that alien visitors might encounter if humanity were to fail to address the urgent problems of civilization, rendering life on Earth impossible.
Despite this somber thought, I enjoyed the last warming rays of sunlight on my face, along with the stillness and solitude. Soon after, however, I shuddered at the realization that many lives had been lost to the cause of this lockdown, which had created this moment of reverence. Analyzing my emotions, I found that the light and colors were primarily responsible for my paradoxical feelings. The light and colors made this peak of the pandemic appear harmonious.
I reflected this light in the backgrounds of my works by priming cardboard sheets with acrylic sprays in various pastel tones. Sharp divisions between the colors were meant to represent beams of light, reflections, and meteorological phenomena in a poisoned environment. I used different shapes as stencils to achieve this.
With this series, I sought to capture a kind of unsettling bliss or a sense of joy that catches in the throat. The pastel tones, in their harmonious interplay, were intended to illustrate this deceptive, peaceful stillness that overtakes me whenever I recall that autumn day. The foreground motifs are exclusively objects and structures created by human hands. Artificially made from highly durable materials, they are destined to serve as the last silent witnesses of our civilization, slowly crumbling to dust after an ecological apocalypse in which neither plants nor animals could endure.
(Bertram Schrettl)
February 2022