robertjanitz@gmail.

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american

vertigo
 petrol green paint
seen in staircase,
537 Broadway, NYC, 2009

In 2005 PCP 1 investigated strategies for maximizing a creative output.

Janitz explored a staging of two of his paintings in Cloud Cuckoo Land 2 in 2008.
American Vertigo is a recent, on site project - and a proposal. Central to this proposal is the con-
viction that beyond describing a (certainly possible) project, as such, its temptative and uneven
stylization makes this text a piece in its own right. Hierachies of text and footnotes are reversed, il-
lustrations in the text mutate to visual chains of association and the designation of the paper surface
to convey precise information moves towards a visual activation of the pages.

1 PCP (Possibilities for a Creative Process), 2005, Providence, USA,

(with Matt Templeton). The week-long project was a study on the ideal
conditions for an artistic production while at the same time observing and
analyzing the creative process.

2 Cloud Cuckoo Land, an installation by Erik Moskowitz and Amanda

Trager, presented at Momenta Art, Brooklyn, 2008 and 303 Gallery, NYC,
2009.
the photo on the right shows the two paintings by Janitz in situ:
 “Pensée échappée je la voulais écrire;
j’écris au lieu qu’elle m’est échappée.” 1
Blaise Pascal
AMERICAN VERTIGO
mixed media, dimensions variable, 2009.

A significant quality of a painting is that it exposes the viewer to a complete instant visual sensation and,
due to its composed nature, a narrative one.
American Vertigo (AV) explores the side-by-side of this instant and progressive seeing and translates the
experience into a surrounding.
It was first installed in Robert Janitz’s studio in Brooklyn in 2009. When entering the studio, the viewer2
was gradually drawn to different visual stimulants: light, volume, flatness, surface, trompe l’oeil surface, a painting
attractive and non attractive colors, open and private areas. from the installation
Also the possibility of a private living situation was evoked, notably through the casually put together
cardboard shack marked with fluorescent tape and partly reflective sub-furniture. The marking tape and the
mirrored surface in particular grab attention when first entering the space. They help to contextualize some
small scale paintings that one discovers, once stepping in, on the three surrounding walls.
The environment includes a looped, vocal audio piece and which amplifies the emotional charge.
The viewer’s sense of balance3 - a key element to spatial navigation, is challenged through a slanted wall
add-on.
The paintings in the installation depict a multiplied the horizon line, stabilizing spatial orientation.
They are put in sets of three on three of the walls. These three groups of paintings resemble each other.
Entering the space one is gradually becoming aware of the paintings - and their communicative task within
the whole studio environment.

1 [... A thought has escaped me. I wanted to write it down. I write

instead, that it has escaped me.] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fragment 370
2 see floor plan on page 7
3 in biomechanics, balance is an ability to maintain the center of
gravity of a body. The importance of visual input for balance is illustrat-
ed by its being harder to stand on one foot with eyes closed than with
eyes open. Visual illusions can override this sense of balance.
Examples of difficult balance/spatial orientation:
a/ York Street subway station ramp. (A long, low ceiling ramp with a tiling
pattern that suggests horizontality, but creates physical discomfort as
the eye and the sense of gravity get contradicting information)
b/ the spiral ramp in the Guggenheim, NYC (which is difficult for painting
exhibitions) York Street, Brooklyn, subway exit ramp
slanted cardboard wall add-on. domestic space marked with fluorescent tape
studio view, 2009 studio view, 2009
Perspectives
AV is an ongoing research possibly serving as an excuse (not) to paint.
AV is an incestuous fecundation machine.
AV is an investigation on the overlaps of space and narrative.

Painting condenses space-time. Here its spatial layering is magnified and translated into a time
based spatial experience. The space time coherence of the all-at-once surface is expanded.
A painting serves as a model for an environment, that again includes paintings. As such it is a
circular logic, a first-person experiment.

As landscape is immediate / all at once - so is a painting immediate.

But there are always entryways and exits to a landscape or a painting: attractions where the eye
is drawn first (movement, color, vertigo) and the composition provides a sequence that ‘sees’ the
viewer through the immediately captured scene4.
In that perspective the usually from the studio separated living situation, is included in AV, imbuing
it with personal presence 5.
Including a viewer in the work is used throughout different painting traditions and different artistic
mediums. In AV it is also brought forward and highlighted with sound.

This project suggests an answer to the question “Why do people put something (art) on their
walls?”
The multiplying horizon lines in the paintings lets them function as biomechanical devices that help
the sense of balance and overcome somatic vertigo
The paintings operate in the whole environment, mutating the space into a psychomechanical
device that first triggers and then navigates the viewer through their emotional vertigo.

Robert Janitz, New York, December 2009

4 Picasso’s cubist work references the complex pictorial (and

narrative) structure in Velasquez’s “Las Meninas”. Different micro-
constellations within the painting blur the boundaries between artist
and spectator. Questions as: “What are you looking at?”, “Who is
looking at what?” (the open door, the mirror, the view of the painter
painting the very scene etc.) are put forward.

5 Classical chinese landscape paintings always use a ‘man’

element, such as a house or a human figure ‘inhabiting’, giving
scale to the depicted, untamed nature. In “Reminiscence of Qin-
huai” by Shitao, the presence of the boatsman anchors the (emo-
tionally) vertiginous feeling the rock formation procures.
(see also the previous footnote: “Who is looking at what?”)
 paintings
cardboard-shack
with audio piece

shelf / painting

viewer
position 1

viewer
position 2

slanted wall/
cardboard
-add-on

marking-
tape
reflecting aluminum

paintings