Stefan Banz’s photographs, videos, installations, and essays have already been published in book form; now, with “Un coeur simple”, the conceptual paintings from 1996 to 2003 follow.
With a few exceptions, the publication covers the entire painterly oeuvre since 1996, which is accentuated in the multi-part series that begin with the work “Rifles” (1996) and come to a provisional conclusion with the “Marilyns” of the series “Let’s make the water turn black” (2003).
Stefan Banz’s conceptual painting follows a simple principle: painterly reproduction. He takes up themes such as media transfer, context shift, remake with the means of painting. With the “Baby Bacons” (1998/1999) Banz translates Bacon into small-format pictures. “I read On Kawara" (2000) deals with On Kawara’s “Date Paintings” and “Un coeur simple” (2002) is based on Gerhard Richter’s large portrait series, but uses pornographic photographs from around 1900 as models. The 17-part work “Apocalypse Now Redux” (2002) shows excerpts from Francis Ford Coppola’s new version of his famous film and “Let’s make the water turn black” transforms fifteen portraits of the photographer Bert Stern from the last session with Marilyn Monroe into paintings.
The publication on Stefan Banz’s painting has itself become part of the conceptual work again. The artist compresses his painting into a new independent product that can be seen as part of his ongoing process of reproduction and transformation.