DER WEISSE WAL

DER WEISSE WAL

 

The title of Ruprecht von Kaufmann’s solo show is taken from the largest and most prominent painting in the exhibition. The composition of ‘Der Weisse Wal’ is dominated by a white lifeboat with only one person in it. It’s elevated strangely above the horizon line, so the viewer has a feeling of either being in or under the water himself or of the boat floating within the more or less abstract composition. The bearded man in the boat seems to hold something in his hands, but whatever it was is floating away in little specks of cut-away linoleum. Behind him, storm clouds of textural paint are brewing. A little flag is flapping in the wind to the right of the boat, as if it wanted to indicate a direction or a cry for help. Behind it, we see just the tail fin of a white whale. But the great animal seems to be merrily leaping away, slipping out of the picture. At the bottom of the painting, there is a second figure, in bright yellow pants: maybe another sailor who has gone overboard or who is propping up the boat.
The inspiration for this painting comes from Melville’s famous ‘Moby Dick’. Captain Ahab’s epic hunt for the White Whale seems to be talking about an experience that most of us are familiar with: the struggle with a pivotal experience from the past that haunts us all our lives and we never seem to be able to quite overcome, or an unobtainable goal we strive with all our might to reach, even at the cost of losing sight of what is really important or of losing ourselves. The search of an artist for his own form of expression and for recognition is one example of this elusive chase of the white whale.
Entering the thicket of this complex show, the viewer will lose himself in the immersive worlds von Kaufmann is conjuring up in the space of Bluerider Art Shanghai. But like the narrator in Moby Dick, in the end, we find ourselves back on solid ground with our heads full of the spirit of adventure.