When in 1427 Andrea Masaccio transformed the representation of the Trinity at the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence into a fresco, his pioneer use of a moodily constructed central perspective à la Brunelleschi achieved him both immediate notoriety and long-lasting cultural renown. Participants in the mass were dizzied by the work as they approached it, so unexpectedly strong was the effect on their physical person of the visual phenomenon confronting them: they were afraid they might fall into the painted space they saw before them. At the same time, this reception constituted a welcome moment of cognitive revolution: for the first time ever, an artist had been able to create a piece of visual art which corresponded to the workings of human perception. And yet what is perceived via the work of art, our own surroundings, does not in fact consist of converging lines or tapering surfaces, nor do its depths possess that magical quality which automatically diminishes that which is represented within them; and should one attempt to approach the vanishing point, one would find oneself in the same position as the wanderer in the desert who attempts to drink from the mirage of an oasis.

Since Masaccio’s day we have come to terms with the lie known as central perspective, because it affords us a representation of our deficient perception, even if it is not in fact the very picture of the world that surrounds us. Cézanne, Braque, Picasso, their work on the construction of cubist multi-perspectivity, the futurist use of dynamics to convey simultaneity, all these represent decisive moments in the quest to make of mimicked reality an invented reality, and to present our perception with something that no longer purports to be a representation, but is content to be simply a picture. These crucial chapters in the history of twentieth-century art, here almost recklessly simplified, were confirmed in this place in their radicalism with a considerable amount of reservation, when they were not excluded altogether. The visual surface as an illusory space, along with visual concepts verbally oriented to a reified vision of reality, has left a lasting impression on the mind of the viewer, which in turn creates distance from the picture – by which I do not mean the representation.

Mayo Bucher shows us pictures which he has released from their delegated representative function: and he accomplishes this without pandering to the lowest common denominator. Let us begin with his numerical series EINSZWEIDREIVIER (or ONETWOTHREEFOUR). When one counts from zero to ten in German, one notices only two odd-numbers-out, the numbers six (sechs) and seven (sieben). All the other numbers from one to nine in German are spelled with four letters, regardless of their numerical function (null, eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, acht, neun, zehn). Now, numbers have been degraded for most people to the purely instrumental, merely registered but not perceived. And yet numbers are the abstract representation of an amount. The fact that the individual number has a written form, a verbal shape and a cultural-symbolic valence is perceived, if at all, subconsciously. And the fact that this form, whether visual or acoustic, also possesses a substantive dimension scarcely enters the realm of the conscious.

Mayo Bucher writes the numbers from one to four together, as if they were one word. Their separateness is indicated by the merest of hair-fine dividing lines, while the picture as a whole is dominated by a sense of the continuum. I can allow my eyes to drift over the script and freely choose the point at which I begin to read. Having suspended the rules of orthography I can be guided by the sound-pictures that arise by turns, DREIVIER and EIVIER. The numerical series contains more than just morphological units, of course: it is in fact an extraordinarily rich storehouse of potential signets, which deploy letters like building blocks in their construction of tags. And so the series EINSZWEIDREIVIER once more resists its dissection into mere notation.

The block letters are printed in such a way as to cause them to melt one into the other. What’s more, their internal surfaces seem to be woven together out of brushstrokes: the plates, produced in a silk-screening process, reveal what looks like a brushed-on foundation, which cannot be entirely covered over by the layer of printed red colour. This preparatory process displaces the representative function of EINSZWEIDREIVIER. Its deictic character recedes and we witness the emergence of a picture: a picture which, in its horizontal extension, is on the way to becoming a frieze. And, it should be clear from the above, this is an ornament that is not simply meant as decoration, but rather as a switch-point between image and representation.

EINSZWEIDREIVIER transforms the architectural unit known as a wall into part of the picture, and thus creates an imagistic power which absorbs architecture (or indeed refashions it into a mere frame for itself). EINSZWEIDREIVIER also exists as a floor picture. Without following either a linear or a grid pattern, it forms a patchwork and thus inscribes its own multi-perspectivity indelibly in the viewer’s gaze. As I look at the picture on the floor I am reminded of bodies moving rhythmically, of dance-steps and the like. Mayo Bucher’s pictorial numbers inspire in their observers idiosyncratic images and evoke personal memories.

If I could have Mayo Bucher do a numerical work of art for me, I would have him create something based on the sequence one-two, those numbers intoned into the microphone to check a sound system. One-two: the sound electrifies not only our hearing, it galvanises our bodies and stimulates us rhythmically. One-two is the introit to a liturgy which is in a certain sense also a physical experience, a musical performance which involves the assimilation of the individual, corporeal person into the general mass. ZEROZERO in the entrance hall is a kind of ground zero, a place where the transport function of the number representing a particular amount tends toward nil. The image of an ornamental structure occupies the foreground without becoming dominant. Bucher has laid down his floor picture over the historical underpinning as if it were a later generation, and thus prevents that predecessor from losing face. The result is a shared pictorial genetics, a common structure which emerges framed within the image’s centre.

Mayo Bucher is a guest here in our house. His artwork, too, is aware of this fact, and not only by way of the sensitive generational play in the lobby.

He uses his painting and his regard from outside to acquire for himself the visual authority necessary for a comprehension of architecture and its visual demonstration to others. This has allowed him to recognise within this space the structure of an architecture which he has then reconceived in his painting: one might even say his image has conceived its own ancestors. And by emphasising such a fictive model, by allowing this template to correspond precisely with his concept, and thus to overlap with it to the point of its own occlusion, he makes of architecture an image.

The University of Leipzig, HGB may count itself fortunate to have as its guest such an intelligent creator of images, as well as such an intelligent locator of images.