My
homeland
My steed
by OtGO Otgonbayar Ershuu
---360° Photo---
'Roaring Hoofs-30' by OtGO 2012-2013, acryl on canvas, 720 x 440 cm, Best Western Premier Tuushin Hotel, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
My steed
by OtGO Otgonbayar Ershuu
---360° Photo---
'Roaring Hoofs-30' by OtGO 2012-2013, acryl on canvas, 720 x 440 cm, Best Western Premier Tuushin Hotel, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Нутаг мину
Хүлэг мину
Хүлэг мину
In
2013 I agreed on an exhibition project for the artlabmannheim with
OtGO, whom I met in Berlin in 2012 and visited in his studio, in order
to present his paintings from the years 2012/13. The works gave me a
whole new perspective on the vastness and naturalness of the world that
I had never seen in Western art.
In 2014 I visited Mongolia for the first time together with the artist. The paths led me to many artists’ studios, to an interview with Jargal de Facto and to further visits in preparation for Mongolia’s first appearance at the Venice Biennale.
I have also had the pleasure of staying at Tuushin Hotel on my various trips and on this occasion I could see OtGO’s oversized painting at the entrance of the hotel every day. I was very impressed by the irrepressible power and energy of the picture, by the virtuoso structure of movement and the dense intertwining of animals, people and nature.
OtGO always begins his painting with a kind of prel- ude: a coloristic primer, large-format figures, sometimes preparatory work with hands and feet. The actual beginning of the picture follows after a meditative waiting with the first intuitively set details, miniature figures, groups of figures, animals, groups of horses, plants. His painting flows out of his hand, unfolding on the canvas without perspective or center, similar to Aboriginal painting, who intuitively create their images and other forms of expression on the basis of their ‘songlines’, extensive memory traces of numerous generations. OtGO distributes its microcosmic elements like a structural net on the canvas. The picture is not painted, but grows like nature itself, it changes without a precise direction and it develops out of a creative urge, an ‘élan vital’, as Henri Bergson would have named it.
OtGOS paintings have no beginning and no end. Their pictorial structure is comparable to the principle of the ‘all-over’ in the works of Jackson Pollock, who painted almost exclusively on the floor, always viewing and working on the canvas from all sides. Perhaps that’s why OtGO uses the concept of infinity more often, in order to understand the picture as a section of a larger whole, a pictorial universe.
This is how his oversized work can be seen in the Tuushin Hotel in Ulaanbaatar: an excerpt from the great flow of time, world history, nature, genesis and the creative development of our world. Barely countable masses of horses, condensed into innumerable abbreviations, are distributed like swarms of bees on the upright canvas, meander through differently colored pictorial zones like dragon figures, the colors of which are reminiscent of landscapes, mountains, seas, forests or the endless steppes of Mongolia.
Horses as primordial symbols of natural power in Mongolia, as symbols of freedom and at the same time as a partner of man, who accompanied him as his closest friends in exploring the world and building civilization, become the magma, the golem mass of the harmony of Human and nature. In a synthesis, OtGO shows the origin and hopeful future of a world in which man does not exploit nature, but sees it as his partner and source of knowledge.
The Tuushin work is a kind of “paradise picture”. Humans and animals are biomorphically intertwined and designed into a panorama-like, condensed, living cosmos. Humans and animals merge into a colorful overall composition in the picture, similar to a reflection of the harmony-oriented Mongolian culture. With their unique movement-suggestive expression, the paintings of OtGO shape our consciousness with an archetypal image of the harmony between man and nature.
In 2014 I visited Mongolia for the first time together with the artist. The paths led me to many artists’ studios, to an interview with Jargal de Facto and to further visits in preparation for Mongolia’s first appearance at the Venice Biennale.
I have also had the pleasure of staying at Tuushin Hotel on my various trips and on this occasion I could see OtGO’s oversized painting at the entrance of the hotel every day. I was very impressed by the irrepressible power and energy of the picture, by the virtuoso structure of movement and the dense intertwining of animals, people and nature.
OtGO always begins his painting with a kind of prel- ude: a coloristic primer, large-format figures, sometimes preparatory work with hands and feet. The actual beginning of the picture follows after a meditative waiting with the first intuitively set details, miniature figures, groups of figures, animals, groups of horses, plants. His painting flows out of his hand, unfolding on the canvas without perspective or center, similar to Aboriginal painting, who intuitively create their images and other forms of expression on the basis of their ‘songlines’, extensive memory traces of numerous generations. OtGO distributes its microcosmic elements like a structural net on the canvas. The picture is not painted, but grows like nature itself, it changes without a precise direction and it develops out of a creative urge, an ‘élan vital’, as Henri Bergson would have named it.
OtGOS paintings have no beginning and no end. Their pictorial structure is comparable to the principle of the ‘all-over’ in the works of Jackson Pollock, who painted almost exclusively on the floor, always viewing and working on the canvas from all sides. Perhaps that’s why OtGO uses the concept of infinity more often, in order to understand the picture as a section of a larger whole, a pictorial universe.
This is how his oversized work can be seen in the Tuushin Hotel in Ulaanbaatar: an excerpt from the great flow of time, world history, nature, genesis and the creative development of our world. Barely countable masses of horses, condensed into innumerable abbreviations, are distributed like swarms of bees on the upright canvas, meander through differently colored pictorial zones like dragon figures, the colors of which are reminiscent of landscapes, mountains, seas, forests or the endless steppes of Mongolia.
Horses as primordial symbols of natural power in Mongolia, as symbols of freedom and at the same time as a partner of man, who accompanied him as his closest friends in exploring the world and building civilization, become the magma, the golem mass of the harmony of Human and nature. In a synthesis, OtGO shows the origin and hopeful future of a world in which man does not exploit nature, but sees it as his partner and source of knowledge.
The Tuushin work is a kind of “paradise picture”. Humans and animals are biomorphically intertwined and designed into a panorama-like, condensed, living cosmos. Humans and animals merge into a colorful overall composition in the picture, similar to a reflection of the harmony-oriented Mongolian culture. With their unique movement-suggestive expression, the paintings of OtGO shape our consciousness with an archetypal image of the harmony between man and nature.
Dr. Rolf Lauter
October 3, 2022, New York City, USA
October 3, 2022, New York City, USA
My
homeland
My steed
by OtGO Otgonbayar Ershuu
---360° Photo---
'Roaring Hoofs-30' by OtGO 2012-2013, acryl on canvas, 720 x 440 cm, Best Western Premier Tuushin Hotel, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
My steed
by OtGO Otgonbayar Ershuu
---360° Photo---
'Roaring Hoofs-30' by OtGO 2012-2013, acryl on canvas, 720 x 440 cm, Best Western Premier Tuushin Hotel, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
