Exegetical Fragments

"[...] and finally the format—a preference for the square, yet never centrally occupied, but rather the motif captured frequently in a fleeting manner, as if in transition. His sensibility for moods, as they emerge from movements, momentary stirrings, and from tonal values of color, predestines him for portraits of musicians. That music carries the portrayed 'another place,' present-absent, for this he found astonishingly evident pictorial means. These were no descriptive portraits of musicians; rather, they translated the amalgamation with the instrument during the act of music-making into optical forms, visualising the listening and motoric concentration of the musicians—the instrument was not a manipulated attribute, but the center of optical—and musicalizing—attention." 

Prof. Dr. Ursula Panhans-Bühler is an art-historical publicist and a discourse-shaping analyst of philosophy and of the positions of art within the contemporary context. As a professor at the Kassel Academy of Art, she served as the co-examiner for the artistic diploma of Bernhard Karlowitz titled: "Malerische Skizzen an verschiedenen Orten — Ausgangspunkt: Das Portrait beim Hausbesuch". For the written documentation of his project and the diploma exhibition at the DRK-Haus Kassel in 2001, Karlowitz was awarded the official distinction of the academy. 

 "[...] and on the walls hung large, impressive paintings: Bernhard Karlowitz displays portraits and landscapes with an abundance of Cézannian fluidity and Hopperesque melancholy." 

Founded in 1705, the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) is recognized as Germany's oldest surviving daily newspaper. Within the publicist discourse, its culture section is considered a time-honored, independent institution for the critical appreciation and contextualization of autonomous positions in contemporary fine arts. 

"The fragmentation of the pictorial whole into individual parts blatantly ruptures the homogeneity of the emphatically beautifully painted landscape; the protagonist's gaze into the distance is even severed directly above his head, which runs entirely counter to classical pictorial compositions. And then, the directional sign dominates the entire event in a disproportionate manner—the Caspar David Friedrichian idea is rendered utterly ad absurdum within Karlowitz’s portrait of the signmaker!" 

Maike Trentin-Meyer is an art historian and was the long-standing director and managing director of the Deutschordensmuseum (DOM) in the residential palace of Bad Mergentheim. Her address for the special exhibition at the DOM themed the Caspar David Friedrichian symbolic shaping of landscape and Karlowitz’s neomodernist reminiscence. 

This critical appreciation took place before the monumental, seven-part painting installation "The Portrait of the Signmaker" (2009, egg tempera and egg-resin tempera on canvas) and certifies Karlowitz’s power to radically irritate the viewing habits of the culturally contemporary eye purely through the painterly discourse of form.

The work in question is a polyptych that projects significantly from the wall due to substantial frame depth, possessing a distinct spatial-installation character, although the tempera painting is executed in a masterfully modern-classical manner. Within "The Portrait of the Signmaker," Karlowitz refers to the Caspar David Friedrichian symbol of the landscape of the soul. The portrayed individual, however, does not reflect the religious-spiritual depth of the Romantic human being; rather, he unfolds his human existence within an disclosure with nature in order to reflect his social functionality as the level of meaning for the New Epoch. 

The symbol of the unnamed sign—a sign painted from the reverse—slashes through the homogeneity of the classically "beautifully" rendered depiction of nature. The fragment of the skyscape is in turn fragmented by the artist, operating as a formalistic fractal that circulates the question of meaning.

"[...] The hectic nature of everyday life, the constantly shifting visual and acoustic influences, and, not least of all, an inconstancy praised as flexibility, seem to me to become visible within the paintings of Bernhard Karlowitz. Yet this is countered by the recognizable personality of the portrayed individuals, from which an impressive tension arises, allowing the portrayed persons to appear in an entirely new light.”

“[...] the painter opted here for a diptych that is divided into sections. Different fields of vision thus emerge, which are capable of operating autonomously, yet within their interplay they safeguard the holism of the portrait. When one considers that Daniel Schnyder is one of the most versatile composers and musicians of our time, [...] it is strictly to be admired how fortunately Bernhard Karlowitz, through the composition of the image, has captured this multi-faceted complexity."

Werner Heinrichs served as the Rector of the University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. He reviews two portraits by Bernhard Karlowitz that emerged in cooperation with the Stuttgart University of Music. The subjects portrayed were Peter von Becker and Daniel Schnyder. Within Karlowitz’s independent art project, the medium of portraiture was conceived as a traditional medium which, as such, refers back in its statement to the individual value-dimension of the individual personality. The repositioning of the portrait in the guise of the hierarchy-portrait was thus controversially injected into the project's discourse. The painter thereby fulfilled the premise of executing his portraits at variable locations and within tight or hectic session periods, tracking the cadence of the contemporary-academic world. Werner Heinrichs’ recognition captures within Karlowitz’s portraits not only the striking connection to Classical Modernism, but indeed the very quintessence of his execution of the modern idea itself, transposed into the present day. 

"Bernhard Karlowitz has [...] carved out an independent artistic position beyond the categories of realistic and abstract art, which could be described as a shift in the prerequisites for, or the attitude toward, contemporary painting and our understanding of the representational function.

This is a transformation of the perspective on painting, at the same time an ancient, not merely painterly problem that has been dealt with repeatedly throughout art history under many different aspects, yet here interpreted differently and anew.  

He allows himself to be pressured by neither his painting nor by a—perhaps imaginary—client. He allows the portrait to emerge from a shared situation, actually an idea, which is primary, or at the very least communicatively presupposed. 

Painting continues that which was a shared commonality."

Rolf Lobeck ist eine legendäre Professorengestalt der Kunsthochschule Kassel, Pionier der Neuen Medien sowie der Visuellen Kommunikation, der gegen den akademischen Mainstream seiner Zeit eine reine, freie Malklasse in Kassel gründete. 

In seinem Gutachten bezieht er sich auf Karlowitz’ Diplomprojekt „Malerische Skizzen an verschiedenen Orten — Ausgangspunkt: Das Portrait beim Hausbesuch“, für welches der Diplomant der Freien Bildenden Kunst eine auf der Temperatradition basierende, modifizierte Technik für die großformatige Portraitmalerei entwickelte und die Portraits in der vertrauten Umgebung der Portraitierten im Takt deren Lebens stattfinden ließ. 

Er malte nachts um vier in Freiburg, nachmittags zum Fernsehprogramm in Nürnberg, nach dem späten, spanischen Abendessen in Madrid. 

Karlowitz stellte schon im Diplom die Autentizität von Begegnung und Situation der klassischen Bildidee entgegen.