The form of the numinous in the painting of Karl Käfers
Karl Käfer tries to renew the tradition of a
magic-symbolic pictography. Whowever
approaches them recognizes the intensive examination of esoteric knowledge of all times and cultures from which the have arisen. In his works the mysterious peers out from the interspaces, from ambiguous
lines.
Käfer thereby imparts a feeling of
uneasiness by playing with illusions - illusions immanent in his very own theme:
human striving for transformation and
awakening. In his works he shapes an individual cosmos in the attempt to represent in each single painting a comprehensive secret. They stand next to each other like monoliths.
Whoever has seen them retains their imprint in his memory. Käfer lives between the cultures. He traveled extensively
to Morocco, Thailand, and Mexico. This inercultural existence is perceptible in the
colourful joie de vivre of his pictures and in the selection of certain symbolic figures.
With a virtuoso mastery of artistic techniques Karl Käfer in his artistic works combines mythologies and esoteric teachings of the great cultures alon with magic and hermetic traditions such as alchemy, cabbala, tarot and astrology. He owes the immediate expressive force that distinguishes his paintings to a reliable intuitive sensibility. One always has the impression that the composition of the picture in its totality is unconsciously present first and that Käfer
only then imbues in with unparalleled exactitude by unfolding their contents as individual elements.
Käfer is possessed by his subject. Each work of art absorbs him for months. And
the translation onto canvas by means of colour is only the last act of a consuming
examination of the numinous - the mysterious presence of a formless divinity. The artist who devotes himself to the spiritual is he who makes the numinous manifest as symbols and allegories. If he succeeds in transporting the respective atmosphere of the mysterious into the consciousness of
the viewer, the artistic shaping of the numinous has succeeded in the best possible way.
Karl Käfer`s pictures are of this type. His works document the repeated attempt to draw up patterns of order that permit the numinous to be approached. Seen in this way his works are aids to meditation - pictures that disclose themselves in their various associations principally to the meditative spirit.