Jan-Ulrich Schmidt (*1976) sets subtle signs. For seven years, he translated pictures by Caspar David Friedrich into a color strip code. The “translations” are based on an analysis of the colors in the original painting, from which he filters out the most common colors with the help of a computer program written especially for him. The colors are remixed by hand and, using a self-developed pouring technique, re-sorted onto canvases that correspond exactly in size to the originals. These translations initially draw attention away from the motif and towards the colors, which for the artist are the core subject of painting.
The color as the essence of the templates becomes the center of the painting, which oscillates between reaction and autonomous work through targeted, more or less clear translation errors.

The artist consciously draws on various models from art history for color, paint application and composition, recombining them and thus decisively contradicting the modernist claim that there can be a decoupled new creation.

Since 2015, Schmidt has combined the translations of different artists into groups of works.

The examination of the originals has intensified to an extreme, with each individual stripe becoming a sign within a sign. The selection of translated images opens up new levels of meaning - they are in dialog with each other and thus acquire their narrative dimension individually and in interplay.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)