Vjenceslav Richter: Tangent over horizontal

Straight line, a line in space that does not change its direction, penetrating into endless continuity in both directions. This practically non-existent conceptual category is perhaps the purest, most brilliant cognitive product of human mind. Its chastity, fierce fanatism, hyper speed, (it is already there where directed) its untouchable incorruptibility, has to evoke respect, esteem, not to say love; if thoroughly thought about.

The horizontal is an evident natural phenomenon, characteristic for our planet, in its shape and its water-flows. Therefore the horizontal is not a product of our abstract thinking, it is a product of our perception, a relatively successful simulation with pretensions to stunt for the straight line.

It is no secret that the horizontal is curved. Except when treated as an abstraction free from any natural properties. It is acceptable with its ‘sinfulness’, we understand it and befriended it, we have been cooperating with it for ages. Its silent incorruptibility suits us also in a general system of calculated mistakes, it is our reliable buttress.

The straight line, however, …. this one cannot be parallel with the horizontal. It can bisect it at two points, but if it has to, it is most likely to tangent it, and immediately separates from it in order not to have to deal with the future compromisers. The free straight lines in space can play the craziest games, their freedom and their possibilities are endless. We can only be thinking about that.

On a plane their freedom is significantly limited.

In overall straight line (length) manipulations there is an evident right angle domination as well as all its derivatives. The presented works contain no right angle. From the endless multiplicity of anonymous straight lines, for the needs of here presented little oeuvre, eight of them have been given names: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and their address is, wherever they might be, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80. This is also the number of degrees that these lines close with the tangent over the horizontal.

A small series of six drawings is an outcome of contemplation and suggestions to divide the circle into 512 degrees. The tool which makes this division conceivable is a new triangle pair which makes accessible every angle from those of one degree onward. Addresses of these angles, except for the real angle and 45 degrees one, are unknown in the existing system.

More detailed explanation of this problem can be found in the book ‘Izazov nasljeđu’ (‘Challenge to Heritage’) published by CERES.

Vjenceslav Richter
 
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Another Face of Octagon- For Vjenceslav Richter

A book opened and its heterogony is left to be explained. The space of two or more irregular triangles, the time of their multi-shaft expansion. To accept the prophecy, and fraud, and any trick, just not the coincidence. Because it does not exist! Otherwise, everything would be permitted and possible, everything would be in vain.

The fixed margins of thinking became a insurmountable obstacle of contemplation, because of the neglected introduction. We could say, the institution of initiation! Preparation for reading of canceled time so estranged that every directing operation is forgotten. Disclosure that would show the way. A small tip for penetration, or the key that will be offered to some for conclusion. Namely, rare are the ones who at spring of erudition of a historic man, arouse their suspicion and predicted the turning-point. Alas! Also a can often needs this unfortunate opener, a sufficient obstacle for not seeing the inside and giving up all.

Brooding over the state in which people die, his thoughts remaining immortal, Richter started searching and shaping. From experience to complexity and simplicity of prediction. And it is about a real, true and live angle contrasted with the dead. Irregular angle, that we cannot say nothing about; it is never mentioned and is kept far from our eyes. Its promotion has to be worked out! He thought: one has to be recognized, the other prepared for rotation. The suitable clarity of facts and presentiments, that do not differ. They are recognized on a cleared plain. Create the system on outlines.

Initiate and create the painting! Why not? The picture: nature of connection and culture of diffusion, that will direct the assembler into baring darkness and significance of light in universe. Release the simplicity of the world and combine in a new harmony. Arrange the reconditioned order.

The range is not wide, but it is deep. And it is close while it recalls the meaning of the concealed and move the proportions of its present confinement. Icon of passing transcendence! Neglected desire! Particularities of philosophical, religious, political point of view that needed to petrify the story of fall or guilt, confirming its orthodoxy.

And the eternity, the eternity is the best moment for reading, and the whole universe is a surface for painting. The text and the picture that overcome every perfection. So the waters are on one, and the land on the other side: the blue and the green. Transparent and transvisible. Above all the sky that glitters and does not repeat itself: symmetry of existence and non existence, hummock and pillar of climbing and ascent. Pure imagination! Create the world out of chips, the one for which for a long time, we find no origins nor in the past neither in future. Except for the spirit of youth! The last of the lost reality myths.

Truly, old legends occasionally offer an explanation or even instruction how to read it. The story of return in some past and rejected time. Encourage the probability of its unreality, and – maybe – already close to some secretive turn or magic. If we – first of all – determine that everything infinite is big or small, – second of all- that one is the same. Prophecy, of the worse an of the better arranged, and of all that we understand just a tiny part.

When working, Richter starts from the outside, from spatial situation, trying not to loose this basic form of action. Determine the contents, without it there would be no shape. Recently, it was a wavy and whirly pattern provoked by attraction and rejection; now being a fan-like product that is scintillating up and down, spreading left and right. Connects with the center and operating in a circle. One that does not think about ending! Functioning like that, it is occupied by movement which transformed into drawing-abstraction and an abstraction that fought back with convincibility and countability of the original form. Starting from a riddle or a puzzle. With a little bit of endlessness that was offered and available, one does not think of it because it will not go, or come. Or celebrate by draping lain on the paper. From doing so, comes a series, or a work after work. In performance, as I would say, in singularity and number, in geometric particularity, complexity and entertwining, fragility and brimming with awakenings, letting the consciousness to stand out with its existence. Because the possibility is beyond connection with the question of statement. Line of horizon that touches the sky! At the point of its momentous encounter. Here in the center, there, where it twists into endless. What a strange permission, or even stranger mercy! And not only because of the procedure or impression by the newly discovered count, but also in the found reason for hopelessness to devour all. It and everything around it. We have to think boldly and conceive our own existence. Defend it in front of the eternal judgment.

The question of opening towards the forces of different contemplation, for Richter presents addressing another reality. Visualizing its simplicity. You are asking: Has the world closed, so that almost no one thinks of it reopening, or is it the flexibility of the spirit that is lost. And in such a way the unfortunate opener also disappeared. It was lost in time and it is forgotten about. Another vision became even more distant, a man put aside every other desire of a distinct reality. Bounty was spent in poverty!

And he thought: look, how true it is that there is no reality in death, since it is buried with flesh, burnt and utterly useless, what remains is only spiritual I. That brings pale memories of environment and nature, but not of poverty and bounty, or anything likely the tested world. A painting is a new state! It is directed from tangent, or the point of contact or intersection. Free from the world, free from the sins. So one form transformed into a different constituency. So the other is lost among numerous separated galaxies. Among similarities it finds itself. Some strange convention of sharers of even stranger experience, one different from the other, one like another through inner eurythmy and awakened consciousness. Something from star transformation? It comes, and is lost again! To shrink in order to disperse. From the known towards the unknown. From hypothesis’s hypostasis about hypotenuse, from one, to another face of octagon.
And now, let us return to Vjenceslav Richter’s paintings.

Darko Schneider

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Vjenceslav Richter was born in 1917 in Drenova. He works and lives in Zagreb. He has BA in Architecture, but apart from being architect, works also as urban planner, painter, graphic artist, set designer and theoretician. He is a winner of 25 architectural, artistic and life awards. Among his numerous exhibitions, the most important are: Arts and Crafts Museum, Zagreb (1964), Albrecht-Knox Gallery, Buffalo (1968), Contemporary Arts Gallery, Zagreb (1968), Staempfly Gallery, New York (1968), Galerie Semiha Huber, Zurich (1969), Biennale, Venice (1972), Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum, Graz (1972), Galerie 58, Rapperswill (1972), Galleria del Naviglio, Milano (1973), Galleria all Centro, Naples (1973), Galleria Visconti, Milano (1976), Galleria La Loggia, Udine (1977).

In Miroslav Kraljević Gallery, Vjenceslav Richter presents five groups from his oeuvre: Defile of the Eight 1 – 8 (70x50cm), The Flying Pyramids 1 – 5 (100×70 cm), In Continuity Each Point is a Center 1 – 5 (100×70 cm), “Howcanitbeforme Howcanit?” 1 – 5 (100×70 cm), Group 512 1 – 6 (50×35 cm); pastel on paper, 1993/94.