SID GASTL, LUDWIG SPAUDE

The occasion for Ludwig Spaude’s photographs is a biographical one. His childhood dreams lead him to the cloud forests of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Madeira, Indonesia, and Colombia, where he finds those images he once dreamt. For weeks, he travelled alone with the camera, oscillating between real experience and his memories. What he sees fulfills his dreams, but also adds something new and unexpected. Added to this are sounds, physical exertions, taking photographs, which requires reflection and decisions.

In the solitude of the cloud forest, interior and exterior worlds conjoin, and the past and present merge. The photographer succeeds in capturing moments rich in sensation and sensibility. On the one hand, they seem dream-like and out of focus, on the other hand, they are razor-sharp depictions of reality. That is what makes them so special.

Sid Gastl does not need to travel. He finds everything he needs for his paintings in the studio. But his paintings emerge in a similar way: from an interplay of the interior and the exterior. Strictly speaking, reality does not exist, except the one created by him. He draws a tree, a ship, a forest – everything real that he wants to integrate into the painting. The choice of colours determines the atmosphere and effect of the painting. With him, too, the dreamy and vague predominate. Because he is convinced that we never can perceive everything. Being is always appearance, and how it really is remains its secret. Perhaps it is possible to approximate reality in the process of painting, where emotion and reality fuse. And yet: the “gentle cloud of the inexplicable” (Gastl) always rests on the world.