Resonanz
The exhibition ‘Resonanz’ (Resonance)* displays a selection of works by three female artists who are rethinking the limits and possibilities of the medium of painting. In this context, they have each created very autonomous works, and yet, these works are—in many respects—in a resonant relationship with each other. Paint is poured or applied with a brush in transparent or opaque layers. The flow of paint and the structuring of the application of paint breathes life into the works, creating a moving spatiality in the images. Tension arises between controlled consolidation and breathing surfaces, drawn borders and free flow. The works develop continuously and independently between chance and control. Each and every painterly action is a reaction to the previous ones, to the artist’s output, her artistic oeuvre, and her relationship with the world. The key to the exhibition is to step into resonance with the artworks, with one’s own life, and with the world that shapes these.
Julia Gruner (born 1984 in Lüdenscheid, DE) studied Fine Arts at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, DE. She lives and works in Cologne.
Gruner’s artistic works explore, in painting, the chemical, physical, and aesthetic possibilities of the material paint. She creates, for instance, large-format pillows—consisting of a skin of acrylic paint—which can occupy walls and floors. Her studies of the qualities of water-based paints and their interplay with various oils are almost scientific—and in these she develops special structures in the skin of paint which, through multiple superimpositions, finally form an independent body.
Rebekka Löffler (born 1985 in Freiburg im Breisgau, DE) studied Fine Arts at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe and is a laureate of the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK), a post-graduate course in visual arts in Ghent, BE. She lives and works in Cologne.
Löffler’s paintings deal with ideas at the intersection of the exploration of personal perceptions and experiences of ‘being-in-the-world’ as well as questions regarding various aspects of human and non-human life, their interconnections, and influences exercised by the digital world. She translates these into a personal formal language, which she develops in preparatory drawings. Clearly cut, coloured forms move dynamically in the flowing pictorial space and stand in various relationships and complex constellations with each other.
Natascha Schmitten (born 1986 in Bonn, DE) studied Fine Arts at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, DE. She lives and works in Cologne.
Schmitten’s fluid and breathing paintings take their beginning in the translation of physical constellations and movements into painterly gestures. Sensual experience resonates in complex compositions of transparent and flowing surfaces that overlap, intersect, and interweave foreground and background.
*The term ‘resonance’ used here is loosely based on Hartmut Rosa’s definition of ‘resonance’ from his book, ‘Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World’. The core thesis of this book is that if acceleration is the problem, then the solution lies in resonance.
