Dick Berckenkamp

Dick Berckenkamp’s Spritz I from the Radio Spritz series is a highly explosive discharge of color and kinetic energy that defines painting as an act of pure movement. The artist’s central intention manifests in a radical, directionless way of working: the canvas is worked on while lying flat from all sides, so that the work only finds its final orientation after the process is completed. What begins as a raw, unfiltered impulse transforms during the course of painting into a finely balanced equilibrium of music, light, and matter.

Visually, the work breaks with the tradition of static composition. Instead of a fixed center, Spritz I offers a visual force field in which acrylic, ink, and spray paint merge in a rhythmic flow. The gestures follow no predetermined subject, but rather the sound and energy of the moment – a visual equivalent to a spark that simultaneously arises and lingers.

Stylistically, the work can best be located in a contemporary form of post-abstraction. Here, the canvas is no longer used merely as a place for self-expression, but as a medium in which different levels of speed and density overlap. The transparency of the colors and the deliberate leaving open of the ground at the edges give the image a vital luminosity that invites the viewer to discover movement in silence and order in perceived chaos.