R.A.P. at Holi Festival

2012, 6 Paintings, each 40 x 50 cm
Various pigments and colors on canvas, HD-Video 3:10 min
description

The project R.A.P. at Holi Festival in Vrindavan (India) is one of several works by Hanny Oldendorf for which he went traveling. This series reflecting on painting consists of six pictures in a style that reminds the viewer of informal painting. They are presented alongside a video explaining how the pictures were created. In the spring of 2012, Hanny Oldendorf took primed canvases and mingled with the crowds and explosions of color at the Holi Festival in Vrindavan, India, creating the pictures in a massive "action painting". Every year, the Holi festivities attract thousands of believers. Attendees celebrate by throwing large quantities of pigment and liquid paint at each other in honor of the Hindu deity Krishna. "I’m excited by how you can create a type of aura – how you can be present at the right time at the right place with contemporary media and translate an event into an image, an object, or simply a file." In his work, Hanny Oldendorf also broaches the issue of his role as a "global" artist who, anchored in the Western art system, uses a different, foreign culture for his own purposes. By deliberately disclosing this process, he makes himself vulnerable and confronts the viewer with this situation.