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At first sight, the paintings of Martijn Schuppers look like photographs. However, what we are actually seeing is the result of physical manipulation of paint on the surface, resulting from the processes deployed. The paintings are simultaneously picture and abstract image, the process of genesis and the embodiment of that process. Nevertheless, the initial confusion with photography remains an essential aspect of his work.
In his book entitled La Chambre Claire dating from 1980, Roland Barthes referred to photography as the medium that links the past to the future because it records the topicality of the present as a ‘c’était comme ça’ which will be articulated in the future. The current possibilities of computer manipulation have ensured that the photograph has lost its position as an unbiased and objective viewer of reality. Now it has become synonymous with deceit, manipulation, and make-up. In Schuppers’ work, its former status as a crown witness in the furnishing of proof forms a pretext for an ironic reference by combining the appearance of the photo with the illusionism that is part and parcel of painting. This generates a rhetorical denial that only emphasizes all the more that painting represents the only genuine reality and that illusion is lodged as a desire within the viewer’s mind.
The yearning to represent a spiritual, higher reality is best epitomized by the monochrome tradition. In that respect, it forms the counterpart to photographic image reproduction. In a Schuppers’ painting, what is experienced as polarization appears to converge in a rather paradoxical manner. His point of departure is a monochrome surface which, after drying, is covered with a new layer of paint of contrasting brightness. Alkyd has been added for the purpose of accelerating the drying process. The painting is generated in the course of approximately one day, not by adding paint but by removing it, by dissolving it with chemicals, for example, or by simply scraping it off, by blowing it with air from an airbrush gun, by washing it, by the vibrations of a sudden shock, or even by a sweep with a bare brush.
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