Prof. Karl Ruhrberg

Former director of the Art Gallery Düsseldorf in the Ludwig Museum, Cologne President of the international association of art critics (German Section, AICA)

The painted formula

Concrete evolutionism of Dieter Walter Liedtke opens up a new world to the viewer. It demon- strates how matter, which had been just an object, could perceive its setting from its own side. This information has a function of the expansion of cognition. The attempt reaches the stage when it is necessary to imagine in what correlation is human to the matter, its own matter (atom and also the Universe), where it should be seeking its place in the dimensions of infi- nity. Quantum theory, as well as new atomic physics reach the areas that are inaccessible to the definitions of the classical physics. For example, it is impossible to define exactly the place where there the smallest possible particles of atom are positioned at a certain moment. The boundaries of time and place are degraded. The exact definitions are dissolved in vague- ness. The smallest particles exchange information exactly at one and the same moment of time despite the fact that they function miles away from each other. The time does not pass and that means that information travels faster than light. And then Nothing begins which exists everywhere and nowhere. Irregularity becomes regular. The more the attempts are to try to find the absolute essence of nature, with the help of signals that act in the fields placed outside of human abilities of perception, the more inconceivably the limits of these signals become blurred. Liedtke makes this inconceivability a scene of action. This is his basis. The indefinable, the inaccessible and the indefinite, the inexistent is what he tries to get into “today.” Joseph Beuys said the following: “I came to a conclusion that there is no possibility to make something for a person other than through art. I need pedagogical concept, I need cognitive and theoretical concept and I need to act, so three things need to be united in one here.”

At the time when Joseph Beuys was researching objects for evolution of his “Social Plastics” and public opinion, Liedtke was developing the concept of cognition theory, pedagogical con- cept and nevertheless, he acts by starting the major transition of “Social plastics” into a con- crete evolution. It is the higher manner of perception which he finds important, not the detail.

It is manifested also in the creative process, in the fact that he seems to be outwardly negli- gent and intuitive with the materials. This is a religious, metaphysical angle of Dieter W.

Liedtke, devoid of the imprint of time. The fourth dimension. The viewer perceives this philo- sophic angle by complex perception of its works. A naturalist perceives it as a plane of infor- mation, which may open up the new beginnings for naturalistic experience and new ways of cognition in Liedtke’s works.

However, Liedtke’s paintings could be understood as key information to distribute the feeling of tolerance and mutual respect of people to one another. Everything is important here. Human being, nature and even a stone seem to be a part of Liedtke himself. The four areas – timeless states, philosophy, natural science and sociology – time and again exceed every- thing that had existed before his works.

Prof. Niklas Luhmann, Bielefeld University, writes about Liedtke in his “Judgments” in 1996:

“He modifies and breaks the limits of known theories. His new scientific theories are a condition and the product of their own activities.”
“...One could imagine evolutionary achievement, which, once invented and introduced, makes itself possible.’’

Prof. Karl Ruhrberg
Cologne

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