BAMBOO - Reinhard Gfeller

Salt Water Drawings

The following is based on a transcription of a dialogue recorded on September 7, 1994.

Ed Heckerman: Why do you call these images drawings, and how do these drawings relate to the theme quiet?

Reinhard Gfeller: Well, these works are drawings because of the way they're made. They're made by a brush with concentrated salt water, and I apply them on paper. It's a drawing, but instead of graphite I use salt water. The salt in it cannot evaporate - it crystallizes into a structure that is dependent on the very elements of salt. Each kind of salt has a unique innate structure which creates particular forms.

E: And how does this relate to quiet?

R: It relates to quiet because its a quiet process. One could say, the salt is it's own sculptor, and it works quietly. I compare it to all of the quiet processes that are the base of the life structure, the life force on this planet.

E: So the salt has a symbolic meaning, or alchemical meaning for you?

R: Yes, for me materials as they exist are very beautiful already in their original form and I can't understand why it is necessary to manipulate certain forms into shapes that have nothing to do at all with that material. What can allow the material to show it's own beauty? The crystal is often referred to as a symbol of purity. The simplicity of the crystalization is in itself a tool to actually see how material forms itself, and in that sense is an introduction to the evolution of life as we know it.



	Reinhard Gfeller

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	Salt Water Drawings The following is based on a transcription of a dialogue recorded on September 7, 1994. Ed Heckerman: Why do you call these images drawings, and how do these drawings relate to the theme quiet? Reinhard Gfeller: Well, these works are drawings because of the way they're made. They're made by a brush with concentrated salt water, and I apply them on paper. It's a drawing, but instead of graphite I use salt water. The salt in it cannot evaporate - it crystallizes into a structure that is dependent on the very elements of salt. Each kind of salt has a unique innate structure which creates particular forms. E: And how does this relate to quiet? R: It relates to quiet because its a quiet process. One could say, the salt is it's own sculptor, and it works quietly. I compare it to all of the quiet processes that are the base of the life structure, the life force on this planet. E: So the salt has a symbolic meaning, or alchemical meaning for you? R: Yes, for me materials as they exist are very beautiful already in their original form and I can't understand why it is necessary to manipulate certain forms into shapes that have nothing to do at all with that material. What can allow the material to show it's own beauty? The crystal is often referred to as a symbol of purity. The simplicity of the crystalization is in itself a tool to actually see how material forms itself, and in that sense is an introduction to the evolution of life as we know it.
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E: Yes, I can see that. The drawings relate to quiet in the sense that they form themselves within a tranquil process. Furthermore, they seem to be very calm images to look at, very symmetrical and balanced. Is this another reason why you feel that they're quiet? R: Yes, I think they are quiet for two reasons. One is the appearance, the other is within the process. However, there is something else that strikes me even more. I would like to read two poems to you One poem is by the Japanese haiku poet Basho, and the other is by the English poet Tennyson. They both wrote about a flower. Tennyson wrote: Flower in a crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower - but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. Whereas Basho writes very simply: Watching carefully - The Natsuna flower blossoms on the fence. Oh! R: What we can see here is how the English poet takes the flower, rips it out. He actually takes it in his own possession, and once it's there he can admire it, and he comes to some important questions. The Japanese poet Basho handles it in another way. He doesn't pick the flower, he only looks at it, and his pleasure is to participate with the flower. He doesn't pick it. He is the flower. Fascination does not necessarily need to turn into destruction. E: So in a sense then the process of making these salt water drawings is something that is more important than the end product, and perhaps because they're so precariously connected to the paper it's also something that in time continues to evolve, quietly. R: I'm not quite sure I understand what you asked me. E: I don't dare touch the surface of the drawings to see how firmly the salt is sticking to the paper, but I imagine that these things over time will begin to take on a different form. Some of the salt will come off perhaps. R: This might happen because the work will be exposed to shaking and outward influences. They are physically delicate, and evoke a feeling of delicacy. The crystals hold astonishingly well. The salt I use is natrium chloride, the simplest salt. It's the salt that is in water, that is in our blood stream, and is the salt that is one of the three big things in alchemy. This salt does not change once it has formed. It only changes if it gets wet again, and then takes on another shape, but which is always in the form of the cube - its own form, the form it feels most comfortable with. I have heard that some scientists go so far as to ask if it might be less happy in a more polluted form where the salt is not crystallized - amorphous. E: So that would make the desert happy and the ocean unhappy? R: No, no in the ocean it is in a solution where the water and salt abide in a mutually agreeable state. However, when it is polluted or agitated it cannot take on the pure cube form and is unable to crystallize. E: So the salt process must be set up in such a way that the water which activates the crystallization is clean and pure, and the process should not be agitated, but rather calm. Quietness or calmness is one of the ingredients in the process of making the images which themselves manifest in a quiet form. R: That's absolutely correct. It's definitely a basic law that the quieter the surroundings are the clearer, bigger, and more perfect the crystal will grow.
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E: Earlier you mentioned that there were three main alchemical ingredients one of which was salt. Can you talk a little bit about that? R: Yes. Salt, as I said, is one of the three basic elements in alchemy. Salt in this system refers to form. Another basic element is mercury, responsible for the fluid, the thing that moves. In astrology mercury is a planet for communication, for interaction, for the intellect and things like that. E: The chariot. R: The chariot, that's right, the messenger. The third element is sulfur. Sulfur contains the element of fire within it - meaning transformation and the capability to cleanse with fire, to destroy. Within that destruction there is a cleaning process. E: And salt is form? R: And salt is the form. It's actually the product of the two. When referring to a family, you have a mother, a father, and salt then would be the child, which is the form that comes out of this alchemical union.
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E: So you're trying to give rise to a tranquil offspring? In a sense these pictures are allegories for a particular ethic or lifestyle that you wish to espouse and promote. R: That's right. Meditation has become a major influence in my life. It is not something that is normally practiced in our culture. Modern life, the hectic, fastness, of telecomplication has tremendously altered our psychic and physical situation, and there is more and more coming. Meditation is a rooting of oneself. It's so easy for me to know whatever happens all over the world, but nobody's able to tell me what's going on with myself. I'm the only responsible person for that. Therefore, I think it's a valuable thing to meditate, and be quiet, to cultivate the quiet. E: Personally, I've begun to understand that quietness is a state of mind which one shouldn't attach to. One shouldn't attach to loudness either. One shouldn't get caught by perception because then there's no longer any flow, and what I see in these images, and what is also ironically implied in the idea of quiet is that flow has been arrested. R: I do think that the image is an arrested flow. It is a very good expression. Now, of course, this is not the way things exist. For example, if the salt gets wet again its appearance will dissolve and manifest according to the new conditions. E: So in a sense we can step back from these drawings in the same way that we can sometimes step back from the rather hurried flow of our lives and take a look at ourselves. R: I suppose so.
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