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until 15.06. | #4255ARTatBerlin | Galerie kajetan Berlin shows from 27. April 2024 (Opening: 26.04.) the solo exhibition by the artist Elisabeth Vary.
Galerie Kajetan is delighted to present the second solo exhibition of the radical painter* Elisabeth Vary, who works across genres. With her color-intensive, geometrically free constructed painting bodies, the artist occupies the gallery space in unusual places and combines them into a carefully choreographed show of more than thirty years of creative work. Transcending the classical genre boundaries, Vary presents us with her multilayered painting pieces, which develop their identity from the color as material, the constructed form and the exhibition space itself and do not want to be either painting or sculpture.
Image caption: Elisabeth Vary, installation view, Photo Marcus Schneider, Courtesy: Galerie kajetan Berlin
We look at differently shaped, sometimes voluminous, sometimes flat, but always asymmetrical wall objects that make the space pulsate with their rhythm and vibrant colors. The objects seem to be completely imbued by color, the quality of which could hardly be more diverse. From luminous to dull, garish to pastel, glossy to earthy-matt, thick and pasty to light and translucent – Elisabeth Vary’s colors, her application and her lines of movement combine to create a sensual spectacle: we see multiple layers of color that penetrate each other, delimit each other or overlap and flow into each other. We look at pieces that convey to us less the artistic gestures than the characteristics, if not the very life of color.
Image caption: Elisabeth Vary | Ohne Titel / Untitled | zweiteilig / bipartite | 1997 | Ölfarbe, Acryl auf Karton / Oil, acrylic on cardboard | 225 x 107,5 x 11,5 cm | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photo: Marcus Schneider
Although delicate lines of color, clear drops of color and the diverse color gradients appear experimental, they are the result of the artist’s complete control: “(…) I control the flow of color because I know from experience what color does in a certain amount when it is allowed to flow.” The artist usually “paints” with a piece of cardboard. She applies paint, allows it to flow or take effect, gradually removes it again in order to rewet, overlay or enrich it. This results in color formations with splashes and splatters of color as a finish.
Image caption: Elisabeth Vary | Ohne Titel / Untitled | 2023 | Ölfarbe auf Karton / Oil on cardboard | 75,5 x 50 x 36 cm | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photo: Marcus Schneider
The grown layers of paint compete with their mostly voluminous supports, the geometrically free bodies. The artist builds the previously sketched objects and painting supports out of cardboard and reinforces them from the inside. They are given a primer coat so that they can ultimately be painted on all sides. Each side shows different traces of processing, which relate to each other through recurring colors or structures.
Image caption: Elisabeth Vary | Ohne Titel / Untitled | 2018 | Ölfarbe auf Karton / Oil on cardboard | 49 x 51 x 9 cm | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photo: Marcus Schneider
While Vary radically reduces painting to its foundation, color, she liberates color from its traditionally representational, descriptive function and expands its field of action by literally allowing it to flow across borders, the edges of objects. This thematizes the border-crossing aspect of her art in the work itself. And this is extended into the space:
Image caption: Elisabeth Vary | Ohne Titel / Untitled | 2021 / 2022 | Ölfarbe, Acryl auf Karton / Oil, acrylic on cardboard | 60 x 50 x 11 cm | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photo: Marcus Schneider
The artist allows her consciously chosen and controlled color to meet her freely conceived and well-constructed forms, which in turn enter into a connection with the space. It is the space that conveys the works to us in their physical form – sometimes they appear light and seemingly floating, sometimes inclined and noticeably tilting, sometimes heavy and firmly anchored. It is also the space that represents the connecting element in multipart works and is part of the work as white space.
Image caption: Elisabeth Vary, installation view, Photo Marcus Schneider, Courtesy: Galerie kajetan Berlin
In their spatial binding, the multidimensional works also activate us, the viewers. We move around them in space, open up new perspectives and gain new sensory impressions. In this way, Vary’s works also refuse a conclusive analytical approach, as well as the attribution to fixed aesthetic categories such as “painterly” or “sculptural”, “expressive” or “constructive”, “informal” or “conceptual”. Despite an open and “probing” gaze, Vary’s paintings cannot be described in their entirety, which is ultimately what makes them so appealing.
Eliza Grabarek M.A.
Opening: Friday, 26. April 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 27. April – Saturday, 15. June 2024
To the Gallery
Image caption: Courtesy Elisabeth Vary – Galerie kajetan Berlin
Exhibition Elisabeth Vary – Galerie kajetan Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst – Contemporary Art – Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
