Loomit | pasta poodle

“You have to master your instrument. Painting is the instrument of drawing. You have to be able to draw the apple before you can paint big on the wall. Before you smear paint on the wall you have to have an idea of ​​shape, light and shadow and so on. That comes from drawing. The craft must be learned.” (Loomit, 2020)

It is impressive to see the impact a pack of crayons, paper and an exciting comic can have on children. Growing up in Buchloe, the graffiti legend put himself to the test loomit with his spray cans in rural areas, before heading out to cities around the world to prove his skills and spread his name. He managed to make his artist name known worldwide, even in the most remote corners, like no other. Loomit has been active in the urban graffiti world for 38 years now, and his heart still beats with full force for this art. And so it is not surprising that his six letters are still the main focus of his art today. In OZM HAMMERBROOKLYN you can marvel at this not only on the southern outer facade of the exhibit, but also very well in the new rooms of his exhibition pasta poodle.

Thanks to his decades of practice and the acquisition of new knowledge on his travels, Loomit was able to develop his own visual language that not only takes up traditional elements of style writing, but also oscillates between abstraction and figuration as well as expressive color. In this exhibition, each picture, apart from smaller series, stands alone and forms an individual universe created by the artist. Illusionistic constructions and organically curved forms can be seen, which can only be recognized as recognizable plastic bodies upon closer inspection.
The basic stage in almost every painting shown by Loomits is one or more of his characters ("L", "O", "O", "M", i", "T"), which he usually "builds" into the room. However, he does not understand his letters graphically, but rather pictorially, with light and shadow. As disordered objects in the seemingly infinite space, they can sometimes distort or bend and become landscapes. Loomit is primarily concerned with the artistic representation of his name, but he does not just want to paint it, he also wants to place it in a room in an interesting way.

At the same time, he uses the characters as a platform for smaller illustrative stories. He often uses animals and landscapes for these stories, and occasionally human beings also appear. According to Loomit, animals do not have any special significance for him, but he likes to visualize them and they are not easily compared to other things, such as people. It is definitely striking that, alongside his characters, depictions of animals appear more frequently in his oeuvre.
Loomit's small to medium-sized works are characterized by the fairly frequent use of contrasting primary colors and are characterized by two to three painted image layers. First, there is the background, which is sometimes monochrome or designed with flowing and subtle color transitions (graffiti colloquialism: "fadings"). Especially in the second type of execution, the background often appears airy and light. The second layer is the differently structured forms or figurations. These are executed in a very dynamic style and thus bring movement into the pictures. It is striking that only the figurative representations are contoured. The other forms do not have sharp outlines, or in graffiti jargon also called "outlines", which is unusual because this is usually done with the pieces. As a result, they seem to blur gently and be wrapped in a misty veil. This creates an idyllic and mysterious atmosphere. This technique is called "sfumato" in art history and even though Loomit does not use oil paint for his pictures, the style is reminiscent of it. The characters and shapes stand out from the background due to their different coloring. Their spectrum ranges from bright colors to muted solid colors and their respective pastel tones. The artist also uses fadings for these depictions. Loomit works with a lot of light and shadow, which creates a spatial effect. But the use of highlights such as fog and shine effects or drips, which are shown as a third layer of color, are also noticeable.
The artist also uses interesting perspectives that provide surprise effects for the observer. In some cases, intensive observation is necessary in order to be able to classify what is depicted in a meaningful way. In order to evoke the impression of a three-dimensional space on the canvas, Loomit often uses central perspective. Various effects can be achieved by using one or more vanishing points. For example, the pictures with one vanishing point quickly give the impression of a rather rigid and firmly established spatial constellation, while the canvases with two vanishing points suggest greater openness and depth, which at the same time assign the viewer a more distant point of view because he or she is more clearly excluded from the picture space. Furthermore, especially in the smaller picture series, rooms without depth can be found that are designed to be deliberately "flat", so that the figures and backgrounds appear like layers pushed in front of each other. Due to the selected image sections, the pictures have a kind of overview and orientation function for the recipients. In addition to the perspective through which a certain space is represented, one can also ask about the function of the visualized spaces. In Loomit's case, these serve primarily to convey a mood (of his person, a character, scene or story), but also to situate an action. As already described at the beginning, comics had a certain effect on him in Loomit's youth. This influence can still be found in his works today. But what connects Loomit's art with that of comics and where can differences be seen?
An obvious special feature of an image in a comic is the plurality on a two-dimensional surface, which is clearly present in Loomit's works. The artist also shows direct references to comics through the detail, the dynamic style, the monochrome surfaces and the contouring through color contrasts. The smaller sizes of the canvases and the arrangement of several smaller images next to each other, which is particularly evident in the series, are also reminiscent of the structure of a comic page. In addition, color, shape or content configurations are repeated, resulting in a more general structure that is characteristic of a comic. Another characteristic feature of comics is that they often present a stage for independent fantasies and dream worlds, which can also be seen in Loomit's work. He uses a fairly wide range of painting styles. In the history of comics, there are also a number of artists who are often overlooked in the usual comic history, but who created unique worlds with a great enthusiasm for experimentation and thus changed the aesthetic form of the comic in a lasting way; for example Otto Nückel with Fate - A Story in Pictures in 1926 or Lynd Ward with God's Man in 1929. They understood the comic page as an art form in its own right and created their own very own visions - above all, they understood how to use the large-format layout of the single page. Furthermore, wordless picture stories also developed in the comic world, which represented sequential narratives, even if the typical panel boundaries (panel: illustrated single image of a scene in a comic) or other comic elements were missing. The option of reporting as complexly as possible with individual images that related to one another was used by the artists in a great way. However, these wordless stories, with their often sophisticated implementation in imagery, were intended more for a culturally interested audience, which is why no truly independent tradition developed from them.
However, there are also aspects in Loomit's pictures that contradict traditional comic design. In most comics, the shapes depicted are contoured, which is often not the case in Loomit's pictures. Likewise, there is no clearly recognizable, seamless connection to a story, and the usual communication with the viewer through text blocks or visualized sounds in speech bubbles does not take place in his works. In addition, in contrast to the panels in conventional comics, Loomit's pictures appear more on their own, as there are usually gaps between the individual images and, for example, no so-called "movelines" are used to illustrate movements in his series. However, as already described, the artist uses other painterly means to bring dynamism and movement into his works. It has also already been mentioned that there are also comics that can consist of static individual images without panel boundaries, as is the case with Loomit's exhibition. The artist has a more intuitive approach to storytelling through images and a keen sense for creating a setting that creates an inimitable atmosphere with its independent compositions. In terms of communication with the recipients, one could say that the works communicate with us like a kind of silent film: the image elements are seen and interpreted, but the artist does not provide any clear linguistic information for the narratives. However, the letters here do not only serve as subjects that Loomit deals with artistically, they are also quite suitable as a means of communication in the sense of onomatopoeia. Moreover, the characters are the most common motifs in the exhibition and can therefore be considered "main characters". This, in turn, is an element that is almost always found in comics.

A beautiful example in Loomit’s exhibition, which takes up characteristic features of the comic as well as the previous descriptions, is the picture The hunt.

What we see is a fragmentary static single image, which uses central perspective to give us an overview of a diverse scene. The image also sets the scene for an action, in this case - as the title and what is shown suggest - a hunt, and possibly part of a story. It is unclear whether this is the beginning, the climax, or the end of the narrative. The background was designed in the aforementioned flowing color transitions, and the contrasting primary colors are also clearly visible. This example of work shows wonderfully how Loomit understands his letters in a visual sense, because the targeted use of colors creates light and shadow effects that make what is depicted three-dimensional and give the image spatial depth. Furthermore, the characters here serve not only as protagonists, but also as a stage for the narrative. The entire composition is very dynamic, everything seems alive, as if in a performance. The two "O"s in the foreground can be seen clearly and distinctly. Due to the chosen design, it looks as if they have two weapons on their heads and are aiming at the "M", which looks like a target, higher up in the picture. Or is the figure on the right in the background of the picture the supposed target? In any case, the "M" seems to have been placed at the top of the i. This letter is clearly recognizable here as a towering mountain that the person is climbing. The figure, who appears to be a man due to the finely accentuated muscles, stretches his left arm up and is probably swinging the "T". Or is the shape in his hand antlers or a crossbow? Is the figure a warrior or even a divine hero and where is the "L" hidden in all of this? Some questions remain unanswered and cannot be answered.
Loomit's pictures are full of allusions, metaphors and allegorical narratives. This is particularly evident in the clearly recognizable subjects of animals. Animal depictions play an important role in the origins of the human representational system and are among the earliest motifs in painting, photography, sculptures and film. They can be found in art over the millennia: for example, as studies in the Renaissance, as wild creatures in Romanticism, as beautiful beings in Classicism or as representations of vital forces in Expressionism. They have also long been found in popular media, such as comics. For many years, animals functioned as attributes for nature and character traits, human senses and activities. But they can also stand as symbols for something. The line between attribute and symbol is fluid and their meanings can also change over the years. Today, these interpretations have faded into the background for most people. But the deer can stand for goodness and wisdom or, because it is a nimble animal, can also be interpreted as a symbol of the passage of time. The bear, on the other hand, is sometimes seen as the formative force of art and the crane stands for happiness and longevity in Japan and China. Today it is clear that there is no uniform, absolute and everlasting interpretation of the animal and that there cannot be, but only historically and culturally limited conceptions of the animal. So it is not surprising that not only the interpretations but also the forms of representation change and expand. For several years now, there have been an increasing number of artists who have developed robotic animals. This can be seen in the pictures enjoyment 1 and enjoyment 2, where a robotic-looking elephant appears to be holding a coffee grinder(?) and a polar bear listening to a vinyl record over a gramophone.
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Overall, this impressive exhibition can be said to combine perfect and professionally executed artistic activity and ingenuity. The originality of Loomit's art lies in the use of artistic popular fringe phenomena: a mixture of graffiti and artistically inspired comics, as well as his ability to reassemble them and thereby create something new. Well-known classic standards from graffiti and conventions from the world of comics are released from their original anchoring and Loomit releases them into the wide scope of his imagination. The focus of his works is almost always one of his six letters, which is usually depicted cryptically. This makes it difficult to identify them in the pictures. In addition to the characters, the visual creation of a mystical atmosphere and the telling of stories are in the foreground. Loomit's forms are drawn with dancing grace and liveliness, atmospherically inserted into these seemingly endless background landscapes. However, they do not radiate the lonely emptiness of Yves Tanguys, but rather a heavenly expanse that appears light and airy. But everything is never clearly comprehensible and so his imagery, which has a high recognition effect, always poses a mystery. In this way, the artist gives the readers of his pictures a lot of freedom for their own interpretations. May everyone find their own story!
According to a cherished legend, comics are the urban invention of the last turn of the century. The first heyday of comics was centered in New York. The modern art form of graffiti was also born on the streets of New York. A wonderful parallel that is revealed by this. And both forms are still elements in the vernacular of modern life.
Sources:
Julia Abel/Christian Klein (eds.): Comics and Graphic Novels - An Introduction, Stuttgart 2016.
Matilde Battistini/Lucia Impelluso (eds.): The large picture dictionary of symbols and allegories, Berlin 2012.
Christine Dallmann, et al. (ed.): Comics - Interdisciplinary perspectives from theory and practice on a stepchild of media education, Munich 2018.
Christopher Ganter: Graffiti School - The way to your own style, Munich 2013.
Klaus Schikowski: The Comic Story, Styles Artist, Stuttgart 2014.
Jessica Ullrich: "Animals and Fine Arts", in: Roland Bogards (ed.): Animals - Cultural Studies Handbook, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 195-216.
Kirk Varnedoe/Adam Gopnik: "Comics", in: Kirk Varnedoe/Adam Gopnik (eds.): High & Low – Modern art and trivial culture, Munich 1990, pp. 110-168.