End Frames
COMA, Sydney
2017

Acrylic and pigment on Alumacorr

152.5 x 81 cm

COMA is pleased to present End Frames by Emanuel Röhss, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Australia. With this project Röhss has turned to notions of cinematic and temporal space, as well as concerns specific to the processes of painting.
Throughout the past twelve months the artist has devised a body of painting work that explores the dual cinematic ‘finale’ of narrative and imagery in movies. End Frames stems from the artist’s inquiry into the essence of the final frame in a select number of feature films: The End, so to speak.

The selection criteria for the artist was such that each film should display a finite end. For instance, the final scene had to convince the viewer beyond reasonable doubt of the impossibility of a continuation of the narrative: no sequel. This could be conveyed through entirely cataclysmic endings (Dr. Strangelove; Melancholia); end scenes where the protagonist(s) are removed from the world in which the story is set (The Quiet Earth); movies that end with the death of the protagonist (The Wicker Man, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid); but also less ethereal endings where the main characters leave everything behind in a more dreamy, romantic, and ambiguous way (Blade Runner, True Romance).

The paintings in End Frames are made on Alumacorr panels dimensioned at 60 × 32 inches/152 × 81 centimeters: a dimensional relationship which corresponds to one of the most common aspect ratios that movies are shot in; 1.85:1 widescreen cinema. The chromatically disparate registers of the paintings are derived from the final frame(s) from that respective work considers. The traces of material application in the paintings that suggests that a variety of processes have been utilized are related to the emotional experience that the artist was left with from watching each film. Three distinctively different methods were used in making the paintings: 1, paint was sprayed wet upon wet creating hazy, yet super flat surfaces; 2, direct adhesion of dry pigments to the Alumacorr using clear paint emulsion; 3, scraping or smearing different color paints onto a plastic film, which generated a “paint skin” that was subsequently attached to the rigid panel. These modes of material handling were chosen based on Röhss’ response to the respective film as well as the idea of what was left behind within cinematic, temporal, and emotional registers opened up by the movies.

Making and arranging work in conversation with a specific architecture or gallery space is at the core of Röhss’ exhibition practice. And the conspicuous way the paintings are hung in the gallery is certainly intentional. It compartmentalizes the gallery space in order to generate three distinct zones: an attempt to order the viewers’ encounter with the work into a beginning, middle and end. Spatial organization becomes temporal experience. In so doing, the structure of the exhibition forms a relation with a traditional filmic narrative structure. To pull this off, a couple of the paintings were given legs, to become freestanding entities liberated from the usual wall support.

Ostensibly, a formal exercise has taken place in the production of these works. But, is it possible to more concretely define the artist’s intention? Is the intention to induce an appearance of the ‘residual image’, or vanished narrative of films? Is it a form of impressionistic painting or re-presentation of the artist’s reverie about moving images becoming static? Perhaps more importantly, it seems that the conditions of this project have allowed the artist to use more subtle painting methods than those used in earlier works, and to interrogate the junction between cinematic and temporal registers via an imagination of the abstruse afterlife of narrative images.