Paint­ing as Ontol­ogy: Chris­t­ian Mack­e­tanz and the Great In-Between

Were it not for the sug­ges­tion of a defi­cien­cy, one might say that Chris­t­ian Macketanz’s paint­ings are images with­out back­grounds. Yet from what is absent, a unique qual­i­ty, a great strength, can emerge. Even when a scene in a Mack­e­tanz paint­ing is set in a land­scape, the view­er can­not look into the distance—because it is night, or a thick fog hangs in the air—or a wall imme­di­ate­ly behind a fig­ure in an inte­ri­or pre­vents any spa­tial depth from unfold­ing. This com­press­es the pic­to­r­i­al event but also brings it clos­er: as though it were hap­pen­ing right in front of us. This height­ens the sense of urgency, and the fact that one can­not evade the image—sometimes even feels besieged by it—is inten­si­fied by Macketanz’s often large for­mats, cre­at­ing a strong impres­sion of pres­ence. The image is not mere­ly a depic­tion, nor does it allow the eye free rein. Rather, each sub­ject car­ries an imper­a­tive: to engage with it, to regard it as unde­ni­ably sig­nif­i­cant and important.

In this way, Chris­t­ian Mack­e­tanz lends the indi­vid­ual paint­ing a vital­i­ty that has become rare. While many now trust only a series of images to devel­op and con­vey mean­ing, and oth­ers turn to mov­ing images—often paired with sound and voice—each paint­ing by Mack­e­tanz stands entire­ly on its own. It is self-suf­fi­cient, valid with­out the need for exter­nal addi­tions, and in this sense, autonomous.

Though this height­ened pres­ence of the image could be used to impose a par­tic­u­lar viewpoint—or even an ide­o­log­i­cal program—what unfolds in the worlds of Macketanz’s paint­ings are above all states of sus­pen­sion and ambiva­lence. The claim to sig­nif­i­cance does not cul­mi­nate in pic­to­r­i­al sym­bols with clear­ly decod­able mes­sages; rather, one is trans­port­ed into realms of the in-between. Again and again, his paint­ings depict beings some­where between human and ani­mal, fig­ures between male and female, scenes between vio­lence and ten­der­ness, atmos­pheres between gloom and cheer. Alto­geth­er, it seems as if Chris­t­ian Mack­e­tanz har­bors a long­ing to live beyond fixed, nor­ma­tive categories—without poles or bina­ry oppositions—as if he even holds a meta­phys­i­cal hope that beyond clear clas­si­fi­ca­tions, a high­er truth might be found.

Even the his­tor­i­cal fig­ures he memo­ri­al­izes in his paint­ings seem cho­sen to embody the idea of the in-between. In the paint­ing Sum­mer ’20, for instance, Edith Stein appears as an image with­in an image—on a wall among numer­ous oth­er pic­tures, and larg­er than the rest. Stein her­self first lived as a Jew, then as a Chris­t­ian, but ulti­mate­ly act­ed as a medi­a­tor between the two reli­gions. At the cen­ter of anoth­er paint­ing stands Rabia of Bas­ra, an Islam­ic mys­tic of the 8^th cen­tu­ry who, accord­ing to leg­end, want­ed to pour water on hell and set fire to par­adise, so that nei­ther would have a clear val­ue any­more. No one would then wor­ship God mere­ly to escape hell or to enter par­adise. With­out the poles of good and evil, with­out clear dis­tinc­tions, it would then be possible—according to Rabia of Basra—to rec­og­nize true beau­ty. Beau­ty, then, is found in the in-between: where every­thing is ambivalent.

In the paint­ing The Wait­ing-Room, Mack­e­tanz even brings togeth­er founders and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous religions—from Jesus Christ to Krishna—depicting them play­ing the flute togeth­er. This man­i­fests a utopia of a world in which ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tions have been dis­solved and every­one meets in an in-between space, a com­mon ground that can itself be imag­ined as a place some­where between a com­mons and a safe space. Mack­e­tanz arranges the fig­ures in this space not only side by side, but also one behind the oth­er, thus cre­at­ing gen­uine pic­to­r­i­al depth and a background—yet at the same time, he pulls that back­ground for­ward, as a large pair of eyes gazes out from it, so immense that the com­par­a­tive­ly much small­er fig­ures in the fore­ground appear to be far­ther away. With this, Chris­t­ian Mack­e­tanz tran­scends even the oppo­si­tion of near­ness and dis­tance, mak­ing the in-between pal­pa­ble as a tran­scen­dence of geo­met­ric space (a sim­i­lar effect can be seen in Par­adise Island).

In gen­er­al, the pic­to­r­i­al spaces in Macketanz’s paint­ings fol­low the tra­di­tion of a per­spec­tive of mean­ing rather than lin­ear per­spec­tive. But unlike medieval paint­ing, his work avoids gra­da­tions of importance—no hier­ar­chy, no struc­tures of dom­i­nance or sub­or­di­na­tion. Every­thing he paints appears onto­log­i­cal­ly equal. This demands much from the view­er, per­haps even over­whelms some, as they are so thor­ough­ly trained to dis­tin­guish between what is cen­tral and periph­er­al, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, large and small. For them—and for oth­ers, too—Macketanz’s paint­ings can thus become an exer­cise: a prac­tice in over­com­ing con­ven­tion­al eval­u­a­tions and tak­ing every­thing seri­ous­ly, no mat­ter how insignif­i­cant it might oth­er­wise seem.

At the same time, in pic­to­r­i­al spaces where geo­met­ric order is sus­pend­ed, its lim­i­ta­tions are like­wise lift­ed. “Above” and “below” can become just as irrel­e­vant as “in front” and “behind,” and in some of Macketanz’s paint­ings, it even appears as if grav­i­ty no longer exists. In Roots, for exam­ple, the roots are found at the top edge of the paint­ing, as if trees were grow­ing from the sky into the earth. And in Night­flow­ers or Red Leaves, direc­tion­al ori­en­ta­tion seems to dis­solve alto­geth­er: every­thing appears in motion, in every direction.

Over­all, Macketanz’s paint­ings promise a world with­out bound­aries. One cannot—and per­haps does not wish to—decide whether what becomes vis­i­ble is of this world or anoth­er. And for all its famil­iar­i­ty, it remains dis­con­cert­ing. Such both/and con­di­tions are most famil­iar from dreams. Or is it, con­verse­ly, a neither/nor? But even here, it might be both at once—and Macketanz’s paint­ing could then be described as the great attempt to regard what some­thing is not as just as impor­tant as what it is.

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