JAN DOSTAL

There is no beauty in itself. Beauty arises only in the friction of contrasts, which are melted in the confrontation to form a composition.

The studio as a place for smelting or forging – for Sazarin, it is chiefly a workshop where work is done. And, in his opinion, the real artist is characterised by diligence. As far as Sazarin is concerned, skill is a key component of ability, and luck plays its part in success, but hard work is the real foundation.

In his late work he has found a simplicity which at the same time allows an emancipated interplay of colours. The simplest thing, which has nothing in common with the naïve, is shown above all in the generosity of white surfaces and the all the more concentrated culmination of colour events. By “emancipated”, Sazarin understands above all allowing any colour at all once it has found its direct placement. Work such as “No” or “Silent” display an almost Asian character, which has more in common with Chinese ink painting or Japanese Zen drawings than with European painting.

Just as the silence of his studio in Hamburg city centre is music to the artist’s ears, so too the “white silence” music behind colour explosions such as “Wave I” or “Chinese Landscape”.

The characteristic thread running through Sazarin’s work is what he likes to call “unwillingness”, because only in overcoming the “painter’s ego” (analogous to Gottfried Benn’s lyrical ego) does he manage to achieve artistic freedom. What originally happened as a creative accident was later “worked up” into an aesthetic concept. While Sazarin was finishing off a drawing in 1978, he accidentally upset his coffee pot over the picture, producing an image with totally new structures. “That’s when I learned for the first time to really see: I was bowled over looking at the scenic structures which were both blurred and clear at the same time, and which I had no intention of making.

The picture was not only improved, it was one of my early fortunate failures.” Sazarin then began to gradually incorporate and control this random element in his work. As well as being his most important assistant, chance also supplied advice, impulse and vision.

Some of the most important influences on Sazarin’s aesthetic understanding comes from Japanese Zen philosophy and the Taoism of Lao-Tse. Sazarin sees thought and speech simply as an intellectual tool and support. The image is as free as the music and has already smothered the head before it gathers words. Sazarin has always been fascinated by the suddenness of the moment (the impression) that a picture can evoke in the viewer. Such suddenness (impact) paired with an impulsive force in the vernacular is characteristic of almost all his pictures. Sazarin’s style of painting happens in the moment, without any before or after. In this creative moment, the canvas responds itself as it is shaken, sprayed, dispersed, painted, or glued… and in many other ways.

Sazarin’s work includes paintings, drawings, etchings, rust and material works. Coming from figurative drawing, Sazarin freed himself over the years more and more “from the recognisable figurativeness” and became increasingly abstract. In many of his works, landscapes, bodies, and portraits are only hinted at, because the artist is not interested in directly reproducing something that has been recognised, but in “turning solutions into riddles”. The preference to create spaces and symmetries from surfaces allows his pictures to be turned through 360 degrees. The picture is not compromised in any way through rotation. On the contrary: the viewer’s gaze gains new perspectives and explores unfamiliar landscapes, so that a picture can contain several other motifs and layers. This “polyperspectivity” is one of the main features of Sazarin’s art.