A rather small piece (30,4 by 30,4 cm) of "hard" paper - to avoid the terms 
"cardboard" or "carton" which are correct but still reminiscent of inferior 
wrapping material - is placed on a thin strip projecting from the wall and 
rests with its upper end against the wall: a completely unspectacular 
occurrence, if one didn't suspect art - due to the context alone.
    
However, this approach to the reserved presentation of the white paper - 
which can be described only awkwardly with words - hardly removes the 
insecurity with respect to the artistic "object": strictly speaking, there is 
nothing more to see, nothing at least that would - through recognition - 
allow the spectator the certainty of an esthetic context. The insecurity 
about the artistic object also isn't relieved by the presence of two or three 
further papers in the vicinity which are presented in the same way and which 
bring into view the physical existence, the real plasticity of the object. The
unprejudiced viewer may even assume a room-oriented installation, though 
without finding a "meaning" in this interpretation either.  What is needed 
therefore is a more far-reaching approach which views the paper and its 
surface as an image. The connoisseur may now recognize a haze, a contamination
on the paper: but is this really the point or is it the expectation of a 
seeing which doesn't see anything yet? What is the relation between knowledge 
and unprejudiced seeing? Can the two be precisely separated? Are they real 
experiences? When does one see? Is there a point where not-seeing turns to 
seeing? From a distance of a few meters the viewer is still intimidated and 
is forced to approach the paper more intimately, in order to make sure and to 
open up to an apparent void. This is one way to describe the structure of the 
experience of approaching the works on paper by Rudolf de Crignis. Their 
creation is much easier to describe though: using hard pencils (between H5 
and H9) de Crignis covers the paper with horizontal and vertical lines which 
he then erases with a soft rubber. The artist then repeats the process 
several times.
    
By performing an artistic action and working on the paper in a very 
concentrated fashion, Rudolf de Crignis transforms the material surface into 
an artistic image.  In this respect his works on paper are not different from 
his blue paintings which reveal an appearance of themselves that is both 
succinct and differentiated. Even though he is hardly noticeable as the 
author of an artistic process, he translates the invisible into a visibility 
that borders on the non-visibility and therefore seems fragile. This is 
especially true of the works on paper which he refers to as "paintings" and 
numbers consecutively. The visible does not appear as a net-like structure of 
lines, as one might expect from the description of the process of drawing. 
Since the setting of the lines is always followed by their erasure, clear 
structures can never arise. The visible thus manifests itself as a faded 
trace of graphite. This description, however, distorts the actual visible 
circumstances because the fading of a trace would point to the past of the 
drawing, which is not a topic as such. The viewer knows of the treatment of 
the paper, but the act itself does not become visibly apparent. Especially 
because it is not distinguished by a particular hand and follows an abstract 
principle of drawing lines, the process of the drawing's creation disappears 
behind the experience of the temporality of the viewing. 
    
If the generic term of "drawing" is traditionally defined by the 
appearance of a line, the categorization of Rudolf de Crignis's sheets is 
problematic, as they tend towards the dissolution of the already thinly drawn 
pencil lines. The character of a line as a distinctive border which separates 
one part of a sheet from another is absent here. If one wants to talk of 
"lines" at all, these extremely fine, very closely positioned horizontal and 
vertical lines are devoid of linearity and escape from themselves. In this 
sense, Rudolf de Crignis's works on paper transform the traditional 
interpretation of drawing, and much that characterizes these sheets is also 
true of his paintings. Even though they are very different from the sheets in 
size, the reference to the subject is of central importance to them as well. 
From this perspective, the study of the paintings and the works on paper can 
mutually benefit from one another, or one might even want to say that the 
study of the works on paper certainly enriches the experience of seeing his 
paintings, so that the traditional hierarchy of genres, which has been 
paradoxically strengthened in modern art by the art market, is suspended in 
de Crignis's oeuvre. In both cases, the viewer is set back onto him- or 
herself. The viewer is aware of the perception itself, it is a seeing which 
sees itself.

Visibility in Rudolf de Crignis's works on paper turns out to be a 
phenomenon of withdrawal under the horizon of an illustrative execution: 
seeing something as something, i.e. as the trace of a pencil line, alternates 
continuously between the only just of the no-longer or the not-yet visible. 
The same is true for the non-visible which is part of the visible as the 
other side of the coin: neither one ever appears in its "pure" form. The 
viewing of de Crignis's works on paper can therefore never reach a goal; it 
can only be stopped arbitrarily and can always be resumed. It is the event of 
seeing which manifests itself as an executed event. For this reason, memory 
does not play a significant role in experiencing these works. While it can 
still hold on to the idea of a surface appearing in blue when viewing the 
paintings, the experience loses almost entirely its determinable object in 
the delicate works on paper. Here, seeing is the fundamental experience of 
visibility itself. 
    
This truly existential self-reference of seeing cannot be refined by any 
art-historical reference to comparable examples in the technique of drawing 
or erasing respectively (e.g. Rauschenberg). At best one could point out the 
comparable but differently realized artistic interests in the works of 
Ingólfur Arnarsson or Stephan Baumkötter. In this context it is also 
important to distinguish de Crignis from monochrome or coloristic painting, 
to which his paintings are often prematurely ascribed. Even though his 
drawings may at times bring to light coloristic nuances, his work is never 
truly about the color as such, but about the more fundamental artistic 
question of instability, the processuality and the unavailability of the 
visible as such. It is precisely this experience of visibility as an event 
which at the same time communicates a contemplative calmness to the viewer 
and requires a concentrated participation that touches on a human quality, 
the perceptive faculty.

Stefan Gronert 

(Translated from German by Philipp Angermeyer, New York)