Sustainability and cultural history are woven into the metaphorical composite ‘BetonGold’ with which Bernd Caspar Dietrich is launching a new aesthetic dialogue. Following a cycle of around forty WHEELs with concentric narratives from 2014 to 2020, Dietrich is exploring the dialectical charm and polarising aesthetics of concrete and concrete surfaces. In doing so, he also expands his canon of materials through the historical material of concrete.
The famous architect and artist Le Corbusier designed and left behind an entire ‘concrete’ neighbourhood in Firminy-Vert in the mid-1960s. The expansive, simple geometric forms and the martial exposed concrete constructions still convey an idealised aspiration with powerful authenticity and an ethical desire to focus on the social aspects of modern architecture, even though they have become outdated due to a backlog of renovation work: Short distances connect the school, sports stadium, youth and cultural centre, a residential complex and the church. ‘Rough, austere, honest’ is the modern architectural style of brutalism. ‘A generic term for very diverse aesthetic movements,’ says art historian Nikolaus Bernau, ’but all of them believed that modern, industrialised mass societies needed art that was as powerful as possible. This is why the French ‘brut’ in brutalisme, which translates as ‘rough’, ‘coarse’, ‘harsh’ or ‘honest’, is so much more appropriate than the English or German word ‘brutal’ in brutalism or brutalism, which has an undertone of violence. The architects of those years wanted to liberate the users of their buildings spiritually, to make them see, to offer them sensuality instead of commercial design’.
With ‘BetonGold’, Bernd Caspar Dietrich takes up the multi-perspective discourse in his paintings. With his new 2.20 x 2.00 metre canvases, which bear titles such as ‘Baulöwe’ and ‘Wolkenkratzer’, he delivers masterpieces of craftsmanship in order to enter into conversations about responsibility. ‘The aestheticisation of surfaces is important for me to talk about elementary values,’ says the artist. Power, property, gentrification and the elementary need to live – is housing a human right? What social responsibility does this imply if I buy a square metre in a charming city location for 60,000 euros? As Bernd Caspar Dietrich puts it: ‘Anyone who takes a space also has a responsibility to give something back to the community and to protect it!’
Gold has been used for thousands of years as a ritual raw material, a symbol of nobility and beauty and a means of payment. Hardly any other material is so durable, valuable and enchanting, touching with its warm lustre and the power that emanates from it. Gold is a rare metal on our planet; around a thousand tonnes of rock are processed to extract just four grams of gold. Is the collateral rock used for concrete? Be that as it may, concrete and the research of master builders into durable materials for house construction go back many thousands of years. So ‘BetonGold’ provides an opportunity for a joint discussion: the visual appeal and the actual value.
By Hella Sinnhuber
