Born in 1963 Günzburg, Germany, Lothar Götz live and works in London and Berlin.  

 

You begin with a dot, stretch to a line and expand to the plane. Lothar Götz extends this conventional grammar of drawing into the third dimension, claiming the space of architecture as his drawing board. He does so with the precise vocabulary of geometric abstraction, all the while articulating it in his own poetic idiom of colour. Götz's large–scale wall drawings are dialogues with given environments, including foyers, reading rooms, offices or staircases. By spending a lot of time in the given room, the artist reacts to its idiosyncrasies, developing a network of lines between architectural points in space that find their way onto the page: a drawing, a sketch is created. Over time, the lines become a distinct plan, dividing architectural areas into functional, aesthetic or proportional sections. The next step is the development of a polychromatic pattern. Guided by experience and artistic decision instead of algorithms or random rules, the pattern develops intuitively, balancing the underlying, sharply defined geometry of line with an exuberant and joyful show of colour. The artist transfers the design onto the wall using chalk and line – an ancient technique applied for modern means. For The London Open, Götz has created Connection, 2015, a mural spanning the entire entrance wall of the historic main gallery. Set at the intersection of different functional areas of the gallery, crossing established boundaries between the decorative and the fine arts and bringing together traditions and contemporary uses of its medium, the work becomes a vibrant, programmatic overture to the exhibition.

 

Daniel F. Herrmann (Eisler Curator & Head of Curatorial Studies) an extract from the catalogue to accompany The London Open 2015 at The Whitechapel Gallery, London, ISBN 978 0 85488 241 0