For his work group of "Screen Paintings" Gert Rappenecker starts with images from movies. He "freezes" selected film stills on-screen and then paints them digitally using the individual painterly brushstrokes afforded by the mouse - the digital data generated in this manner are then transposed onto canvas by means of a paint jet printer.
In the course of the numerous stages such a work involves, Rappenecker combines different techniques and artistic media. Technologically and media-based content and materials are lined in such a way that the respective quality of the individual elements such as film, computer, painting, projection etc. blend to form a new whole that conveys a new level of contents and signification… The collision of subjective gesture and digital technique serves to individualize the images from film ( a mass medium) and narrates new stories with a quite infinite associative depth. The film as the origin is never concealed, but Rappenecker's picture thrives specifically only on the margins of the contents of the respective movie. ...
By processing the film stills on-screen and then printing out the new pictures onto canvas, Rappenecker is not only able to create subtle shifts in reality level but also to forge distance. Technically, the pictures are so far removed from the medium of film that they actually share nothing other than the actual motif with the original stills. This process of distantiation (in medium, technology and content) coupled with the element of frozen capture of the image causes a sense of remoteness that prompts viewer to hold their breath for a moment, strongly captivated and somehow transported into a new realm. The media-based film image becomes an emotional image that can be experienced in a quite different way.