Opening: Friday July 16, 2004, 7
pm participating artists: Ina
Bierstedt, Dunja
Evers, Stefanie
Schneider, From among the artists who have appeared at the gallery since its opening over a year ago, the 'Beautiful Views' exhibition brings together the works of five of them. On the one hand, it is a review of the exhibitions done till now, on the other, a preview of what is to come. The landscape content of the works of art also defines them as 'beautiful views'. The landscapes include both realistic and stylised representations of real or imagined places. In the case of Ina Bierstedt, the paintings move between abstraction and objectivity, charging the settings with tension. As a result, the viewer's eye wanders through the composition searching in vain for clues that give information about what it is seeing. The lengthy painting process and the artist's continuous search for the picture's final form, is obvious from the many layers and coats of paint. Both film and painting play a meaningful role in Dunja Evers' photographs. The artist uses long exposures to photograph specific sequences from super 8 films. As a result, a number of film images are superimposed to create a still picture, which later achieves its intense colour by means of a number of monochrome layers. One of Dunja Evers' presentations is dedicated to landscapes. However, the motifs are only hesitantly recognisable, and what is shown is so vague that the landscapes can hardly be identified. The viewer will only recognise the scene if he allows the suggested landscape to blend with his own experience of a concrete one. Stefanie Schneider's photographs present landscapes empty of any human form and frequently far from any type of civilisation. A wide open sky over a low-flying horizon; the view, a string of small hills. Taken while driving, the landscape is sometimes slightly out of focus. The shimmer in the pictures is increased through substantial changes to the Polaroid material. Due to this artful, strange effect, Stefanie Schneider's landscapes are no longer neutral presentations of a surrounding. It is much more the haphazard presentation of light, air and flexible space that influences the relationship of people to the landscape. From a distance and trusting their own experiences, viewers may imagine that Stefan Sehler's works are photographs of mountain panoramas. This impression is reinforced by the presentation in passe-partouts and frames. It is only later that the artistic play of light spread over the surface, giving an impression of downward slopes and moraines, becomes evident. Nevertheless, the artist's hard-to-control painting process appears to be a calculated imitation of nature. The aesthetic conception of nature found
in Olaf
Quantius' pictures can be recognised as inspired by writer Thomas
Bernhard. In his „Ottnang“ cycle, Olaf Quantius draws
from the author and his surroundings: his houses and furnitures,
the landscape and so on. However, the pictures are much more than
a dry testament to a historical person and his possessions. Using
artistic means, amorphous forms, smudging, light play and expressive
accents, Olaf Quantius achieves unusual intensity in his work, which,
at the same time, stresses the act of painting and focuses on the
exciting relationship between painter and motif. |
