In a darkened room of approx. 30 sqm, an object hangs in the middle, which is illuminated by three flashlights resting on a pedestal and casts a wall-filling shadow. This shadow image consists of many coloured segments that flow constantly into each other corresponding to the gentle rotation of the object.

Rolf Kirsch is a painter and, according to his own statement, committed to the ideas of Fluxus. As a result, his interest has always been in excursions beyond the horizon of pure painting. Not least the examination of the rapidly developing electronic image processing led to a whole series of works that investigate the relationship between traditional and new pictorial media. "The Painter in the Dark" was the title of a series of exhibitions in which the painter and conceptual artist presented his artistic examination of recent years. The darkness addressed in this title also describes the general working conditions for the painter, who has to fear more and more that his craft seems obsolete due to the dominance of electronic, digital image processing. In his installation "Nachtschatten", Kirsch currently shows that this title is not only to be understood metaphorically, but also concretely.

All technical pictures are shadow images
In this context, Kirsch develops his confrontation with shadow projections. In principle, he follows the tradition of the photogram, a working method that was founded in the 1920s by artists such as Christian Schad, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. Based on the famous "Light-Space-Modulator" by Bauhaus artist Moholy-Nagy, Kirsch stages his photograms from a cinematic understanding. Thus his projections are subject to constant change due to the continuous movement of the shadowing objects. These do not lie flat on photographic paper, but "float" in space. The working method is as simple as it is astonishing: the objects positioned in front of the projection screen are illuminated by point-shaped light sources in the three basic colours. The resulting shadow images overlap and mix at the same time. Light, half-shade and core shadow result in a colourful image. Minimal air movements, triggered by a passing audience, cause the object hanging on a thread to rotate constantly, thus creating a permanent "film".

Parallel to this, Kirsch presents photograms of his shadow images as an edition, giving them a material presence and thus turning the handling of light into a truly painterly act.

Katalog R.J.KIRSCH | REANIMATION, 160 pages, 2024, 30 x 40 cm, exp.edition@netcologne.de

R.J. Kirsch's work is a fascinating interplay of light, shadow and perception that invites the viewer to experience the process of creating images as fleeting, almost magical events. A central element of his artistic practice are the shadow images, which question the condition of the visible in their mobility and fleetingness. Kirsch works with small objects composed of everyday materials or technical fragments, which are projected by light sources and thus create lively, dynamic shadow images. These projections are not static, but change continuously depending on the viewing angle, light source and spatial configuration. The shadows themselves are the image, they are the visual echo of the material created by the interplay of light and shadow. They are reminiscent of moving photograms that exist in constant change and invite the viewer to actively enter into the perception of the image. These fleeting, moving shadow images are more than mere projections: They are mirrored moments of the material, which in its lightness and uncertainty thematizes the principle of perception. The space itself becomes the carrier of these processes - the shadow becomes an image, but never a final, fixed object. There is always a moment of change and unfinishedness that challenges our own perception of images.

In addition to the shadow pictures, Kirsch also plays with the aesthetic quality of fold pictures, which take up principles similar to photograms in their creation. The folds - with their structure and their play with light - almost seem to act as natural allies of the shadows, lending the work a poetic depth. These fold images are also created through the interplay of light and material, with the folds acting as agents of light through their physical nature. They collect and reflect the light so that the image does not emerge from the outside but from the material. Here, folds and shadows form a symbiosis that enables a fluid transition between the states of visibility and invisibility.

In both groups of works, the shadow projections and the fold paintings, it is not the final image that interests Kirsch, but the process of image creation. These works challenge the viewer to engage with the fleetingness and changeability of the image - and thus reflect an attitude that is often lost in today's art: a deep engagement with the moment of seeing, without forcing the image into a final form.


The work of Kirsch can be read as an artistic investigation of so-called self-illustrating phenomena - phenomena that make themselves visible through their own conditions. For this Kirsch uses means such as light, shadow, reflection or material deformations not only as techniques of representation, but also as active image carriers that turn themselves into content. His folded pictures are created from light projections that do not illuminate an object, but generate its visual essence in the first place. The objects he builds - assembled from technical scrap and everyday fragments - are not visibly decisive in themselves, but rather through the shadows they cast: the visible arises from the ephemeral, the shadow illustrates the object and at the same time its disappearance. His earlier explorations of sonograms, x-rays and scientific visualizations also demonstrate this principle. It is about forms of representation that gain their visual language from the phenomenon itself: The invisible is visualized through itself - through sound, light, physical traces. By making processes visible that are normally overlooked or dismissed as “mistakes” (such as deformations, disturbances, shadows), he draws attention to those moments in which a phenomenon becomes its own representation - entirely in the sense of a self-illustrating event.