NOW & THEN
Antique meets Contemporary

‘Floral’ – brooch by Georg Dobler in silver set with lemon citrine

Georg Dobler

Georg Dobler’s interest in Nature does not end with capturing the beauty of a stemmed flower with bud and leaf; he aims to bring out how organic form seems to be an expression of a structural equilibrium. There is something of the atmosphere of Metaphysical Art, which captured that aura of stasis in which flowers and objects appeared immersed in a mysteriously abstract act of communication. In Dobler’s work one can see a dual reading of naturalistic figurative work: for all its emphasis on sensual charm, there is also an insistence on the rigidly-logical organic structures that thus reveal an abstract identity. In his investigation of floral motifs the artist uses technological means - for example, spectroscopic investigations of cells and molecules - and thence transposes scientific data into figurative form. The reality of the senses thus appears as a revelation of a underlying complexity, with the artist representing not only form and colour but also implicit structure.

Dobler brings together the multiplicity of the natural, often representing the components that play a role in genetic organisation: when he describes a flower as an entity of appearance, his rigorous rendition of form not only accommodates the intensity of sensual appearance but often seems to be a botanical exploration as well. In his complex combinations of geometrical forms - in particular, squares juxtaposed in an apparently Constructivist way - the various surfaces of the materials result in a temporal, existential reading of appearance. And the mechanical combinations of interwoven tubular axes, held in place by hexagonal screws of transparent amethysts, are not a stylised, geometrical rendition of branches but the formulation of a possible primary structure of organic form. Dobler’s vast range of materials even includes photographs: sometimes the spectral images of scientific investigations of cellular structure, and sometimes mere impressions of marine landscapes, the reality of which is made fabulously present by small spheres of beryl aquamarine and aquamarine scattered across the surface (their very name seeming to conjure up the reality of the scenes depicted).

Drawing on botany, physics and chemistry, Dobler offers a representation of the natural world in which these sciences are not merely the means for investigating the totality of being but also sources of sense data in their own right - a contribution to our imagination, to our perception of the real.

The essentially abstract structuralism of Dobler’s work is well illustrated by the minimalist pieces of the 80s, in which two-dimensional geometric surfaces are enclosed by guidelines that define both the area itself and its position in space. This distinctive use of line, together with vibrant mobility within each piece, has in the later works evolved into a sort of voluble baroque - which can serve either to frame a flower, branch or sprig, or to bring them into being.

Biographical Details