DD: Your work is characterized by two different modes, an anonymous, objective mode and an expressive one.
GF: I don’t separate it like that. I like using different media.
DD: And you don’t consciously create a polarity between an objective and an expressive mode?
GF: Well, yes, one could say quite concretely that the composition of my lead pictures is anonymous whereas the manner in which they have been painted is expressive. Or, in my freestanding sculptures I aim at an anonymous form but create an expressive surface. Even in the large photos you become conscious of the grain of the film; they become almost pointillistic.
DD: You emphasize the notion of framing in your insistence on the actual frames or the edges of a wall and by your simultaneous dissolutions of boundaries, as in the reflection in the mirrors. Are you commenting on art’s ability to make unequivocal statements?
GF: No, I don’t see it like that. But that’s for the critics to decide. What I like about the bronze reliefs, for example, is that they exist somewhere in a space between sculpture and painting. There are paintings by Hans von Marees where one finds a similar situation. The faces in his paintings are half plastic. I like the coexistence of different media and approaches in my work. Some works are concerned with dissolution, but there are also the reliefs and freestanding sculptures, where I have all the diversity and richness that I negate in the other works. It all belongs together, and I enjoy the possibility of going back and forth between them. Sherrie Levine’s art is pure quotation. I enjoy painting. For example, I very much like the work of Baselitz, who is interested in an abstract expressionism. People are often amazed at that, and they have accused me of having returned to traditional painting. But painting is really important. There are, of course, times when one negates that, but today I see my work as more aligned with the classical tradition in art.
DD: What values do you assign to colors?
GF: My colors don’t have symbolic meaning in the sense that red is blood and black is death.
DD: You quoted the colors of the Villa Wittgenstein in your installation in the Haus Lange in Krefeld.
GF: Yes. By means of color I was able to connect the two different architectures of the Villa Wittgenstein and of the Haus Lange designed by Mies van der Rohe. Photos of the Villa Wittgenstein formed the graphic part of that exhibition, but they were now put in Mies van der Rohe’s architecture. The windows in Mies’ building are placed so that they would frame perfectly the old trees in the park outside. He turned each window into a frame. I contrasted that with the vertical planes of the Villa Wittgenstein where there is absolutely no concern with the outside. Those are again the two aspects of my work: the relationship of plane to space and of interior to exterior. In addition, I transferred the color scheme of the Villa Wittgenstein to the Haus Lange and painted the supporting walls on the inside in a very pale ocher and the non-supporting walls in a pale gray. But the nuances were so subtle that only a very few people noticed it.