55 - JIRI GEORG DOKOUPIL

JIRI GEORG DOKOUPIL (born 1954 in Krnov, Czechoslovakia; based in Madrid) Pelaluka Soap suds and pigment on canvas. 115 x 115 cm. Signed and titled on the reverse, on the folded edge of the canvas, upper left. Provenance: Private collection, Bavaria Jiří Georg Dokoupil is one of the founders of the Mülheimer Freiheit group, which is associated with the New Wild Ones. Hardly any painter of his generation has reinvented his method so often: he has developed over a hundred techniques of his own, including the soap bubble paintings, which he has been working on since 1992. To create these, he stands on a ladder, drags a metal hoop through pigmented soapy water, and lets the bubbles descend onto the horizontal canvas. The paint is applied the moment the bubble bursts. What remains is the bubble’s skin. His works are represented, among other places, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. Against a deep black background lie a good dozen such skins, oval and lens-shaped, each marbled in its own right: gray, white, an olive-yellow border, with violet in between. Fine white threads and droplets run through them. Two forms glow red against the cool color palette, anchoring the center of the square composition. Because the background suggests no depth, the forms float freely: one sees cells under a microscope, planets, seashells—the longer one looks, the less the image solidifies. The appeal lies in the contradiction. Nothing here is drawn; every line is physics, and yet the shapes are arranged in such a way that one wouldn’t want to rearrange them. Dokoupil captures the most fleeting subject known to painting.