Markus Döhne, Graphic artist. — What presents itself here is a matter with a political dimension. Since the emergence of the technique of woodcut printing, the graphic arts have struggled to overcome the divide between two undeniable: their contribution to democratization of the image on the one hand, and the inherent dangers of ruthless commercialization, artistic superficiality and politically propagandistic instrumentalization on the other. It is this tension that gives rise to Markus Döhne’s artistic strategy. He does not reject the reproducibility of images, but he attempts to archive something that one could call their reauratization using graphic means. The material for this undertaking is supplied by the artistic medium most severely affected by its own reproducibility, namely photography.

Assuming that there is no such thing as unmanipulated photography, artistically using and adapting photographs can only represent another form of manipulation. The decisive difference lies in the degree to which this is rendered transparent. Reproduction establishes a link to collective memory, but in the process of artistic re-forming, authenticity enters the picture through the questions that remain open, through the ruptures and gaps.

Döhne’s unabashed delight in ambiguity generates ever new unexpected perspectives. Strastnaya Dancer [1998] derives its life force from the missing corner, toward which the viewers almost compulsively direct their attention. While we are used to being fobbed off visually with details extracted from images, convention demands that the fragmentary image be polished in the process of reproduction, and certainly not demonstratively placed on display. Might the missing part provide some explanation? The scene seems so heavily laden with the sense of a looming danger threatening to break forth at any moment that we find it nearly impossible to envision people dancing and celebrating on the street as the title would have us believe. Do we see only what we want to see?

With regards to formal aspects, Döhne’s works are marked by a tendency toward expansion of the image in space. Double [2000] not only extends itself across the two-dimensional plane through duplication, but also detaches itself optically from the wall: the polyester sieve, which is treated with photographic emulsion, appears to float in front of the wall like a back-lit screen. The entire structure of the image is extremely convoluted, and the viewer must possess acute powers of deduction to recognize that this is actually a self-portrait made in a mirror. But to deduce that the subject is none other than Che Guevara requires more extensive research, for how else might we connect this self-portrait with the photograph of the bearded rebel — the iconic image that we all are familiar with? The photograph shows the nearly-bald Che in an intimate and almost compromising situation, immediately after having illegally entered Bolivia. The official Che Guevara has disappeared, and a completely different person emerges in his place: Guevara’s double. But who is it that the photographer sees?

Markus Döhne restores the right to the historical document. These images are overflowing with complicated stories that require willingness on the part of the viewer to fathom their depths. In fact, it may well be not even Döhne himself is aware of all the references and allusions in their totality. Every interpretation of Döhne’s work must inevitably confront its essential complexity, which also entails the relationship of each individual piece in space. In his exhibition Druckzonen [2001] of the last year, held on the occasion of Döhne’s receiving the City of Limburg’s Art Award, the way the images were hung was itself an impressive demonstration of his sculptural way of thinking. The semi-transparent gauze tableaux of the Green Screens, Refugee Series. were suspended freely in space, so that the paths of the anonymous refugees could potentially cross the paths of the exhibition visitors. Here, the distinctions between past, present and future no longer possess any validity, nor does that between real experience and the image thereof. Somewhere in between, history takes place.

The three entries that Markus Döhne has submitted to this year’s Exhibition of Graphic Art in Frechen also serve to locate the position of the graphic artist conceptually. They serve as a prime example of how traditional graphic techniques [...] can find innovative forms that brake with convention, analogously to the constant reformulation and development of aesthetic questions. While the guiding principle here remains the correspondence between form and content, Döhne is too much the graphic artist and too well versed in graphic techniques not to constantly subject the medium to new challenges. The experimental temperament runs up against the medium’s boundaries with the goal of stretching them further and ultimately, of demonstrating that this is the only way to guarantee the freedom of graphic art.
Translated from German by Deborah Bowen