The valley narrows Painting

Even as a young boy, the Hamburg-born List was fascinated by the play of light and shadow, just as his uncle, the famous photographer Herbert List, had put it on paper. When he turned – late – to art, he was consequently looking for a material that would open up such a play of light and discovered the unusual material of plaster bandages. The artist has given plaster-soaked fabric ribbons a completely new shape. In long paths, arched with faults, gorges, abysses and moraines, Dieter List has created a world of experience with this material that is reminiscent of magnificent landscapes which, depending on the incidence of light and shade, create something new. But nothing is what it seems to be. The strong first impression when part viewed actually reveals only a small of the artwork. What seems absolute is is in reality relative. The objects of Dieter List, his plaster reliefs, have to be walked around, circled, as only then the unecpected landscapes in their colour variations can be discovered. These expressive and intense forms of plaster give new and different colour experiences depending on the position oft he viewer. Thus the artworks are perfected only in the mind oft he viewer. He calls this technique „ThreeViews“ („DreiSicht“). While the „ThreeViews“-technique is reminiscent of landscapes, Lists`s other plaster bandage technique is about architecture. Here the artist works with smoothed plaster, i.e. plaster bandages in which the typical small holes are no longer visible due to the smoothing oft he material by hand. In several layers on top of each other and painted in just one colour, these artworks are stricter, more sculptural, more puristic. Consequently the German Dieter List uses the English term „Pure“ for this technique. Here he is again concerned in the original sense with the play of light and shadow in multi-layered spaces. So his „Pure“-objects mark a return to the starting point of his work as an artist.