Strong views from the pews

By CATHRIN SCHAER

Looking up at the ceiling of the German church the village girls told their priest they thought the mural might have looked like God.

"But maybe you shouldn't write that," says Berlin-born-and-based artist Rocco Pagel, whose work is on show at the Muka Gallery in Ponsonby. Why not? Possibly because this is one of the most controversial definitions given to his work in small churches around Germany.

Since 1999 Pagel, working with Daniel Schilling-Schoen, a theology student, has been gathering a band of artists and spending six weeks of every summer decorating small village churches in unique ways.

In New Zealand with fellow artist, sculptor Julia Hansen-Loeve, to open his exhibition and to participate in the Muka Gallery's Youth Prints programme, Pagel flips through a book of pictures of his and the other artists' work from the church projects.

In the photos, the oil mural that was likened to God is sitting on the crease where wall meets ceiling. From a distance it looks like it could be water damage, a dark and spreading damp patch. But closer inspection reveals it as a dense, abstract mass of swirling colours and lines. On the old church's walls it's an unusual but strangely beautiful addition.

"Actually one of the most discussed things was The Heart Wreath," Pagel says, moving right along to another photograph of his work in a village church.

"Part of the village was saying it's too black, too depressing. But others said no, black is a part of life and the lighter colours are those of optimism. Which meant that it was a very real heart and should have a place in their church."

How did a modern artist like Pagel, who is not religious in a conventional sense but simply "very curious" about religion, convince relatively conservative country dwellers to let him run amok inside their old church?

"We approached the first church and told them we'd like to make something different," he says, "and we would explain everything. Because I think one of the most important things is to work with the people, to create a new relationship between the people and the objects in the church."

For instance, in one painting Pagel did of an angel he first asked all the townspeople to draw their interpretation of what an angel looked like.

The final artwork was collaborative yet personal: Pagel combined all the ideas - and line drawings - with his own. "And now the angel is really a part of the village," he notes.

After the project in the St Georg Protestant church in the town of Krawinkel was successful, Pagel didn't need to ask elsewhere - churches started inviting him.

"The art we make in the churches becomes part of the history and the future of those buildings," he says.

In New Zealand Pagel has been working on one piece specifically for his show, a freestanding piece of wall, complete with skirting board, that takes centre stage in the gallery. The wall has been whitewashed with traditional colour and one of Pagel's murals now covers a third of it.

But really, the 29-year-old artist says, this is a compromise for a gallery show.

"Because it's important for art to become part of life, not be separate from it," he concludes. "When it works well it has a function in society; it's part of daily life."* Paintings and lithographs by Rocco Pagel, Muka Gallery, until October 26; Muka Gallery's Youth Prints exhibition travels the country from November 4 and will be in Auckland December 7-9.