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until 22.10. | #0711ARTatBerlin | SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY shows from the 9th September 2016 the exhibition pursuit of happiness by the artist Clara Brörmann.
Numerous coloured strips are cut from the monochrome blue pictorial plane of
Wurfzabel 1 so that the coarse canvas and a painting that seems to be behind the
blue paint are revealed. Similar to a collage, where individual sections are
painted or pasted over, the silhouettes of red shapes underneath the white areas
of Die Liebenden emerge. In Wald, the emerging shapes oscillate with the
retreating ones, so that the painting seems almost like a piece of fabric. In the
large diptych Ringdans, the remaining very thin applications of paint create the
impression of a fading fresco.
The cut edges, the revealed canvas, the visible different layers of paint – all these
are traces of the process of creation: Clara Brörmann’s modus operandi is a play
with her painterly opposite, where the painting’s status quo is continuously
subjected to interventions until a final point has been reached, making the
various steps of the process visible and rendering them parts of a new whole.
Brörmann’s works are characterised by their own inherent temporal and spatial
simultaneity: the numerous steps in the process create a condensed temporality
characterised by an interlinking of before and after. At the same time, a
multilayered pictorial space emerges where the below of the canvas as the
support and the above of the applied paint merge. And finally, in Clara
Brörmann’s paintings, the sides of the stretcher frames are integrated; they, too,
reveal an earlier state of the painting and at the same time lend it the appearance
of a sculptural object.
The works in the exhibition pursuit of happiness are an extension of this play of
exploring colour, form, and composition. Searching for new possibilities of
placing her abstract paintings in unusual situations for reception, the artist has
added another rule to her game: the descriptive titles open up a space for
interpretation that places the abstract forms into a concrete context.
The four circles turning inside one another thus become the wheel of the fickle
decider of fates, the goddess Fortuna, who delivers happiness and unhappiness;
the circle that can be made out in the large diptych can be interpreted as a trace
left by the dancers in the circle, the Ringdans; and the geometrical white shapes
reveal themselves to be trees in close proximity in Wald.
The painting, the title and the beholder’s associations form a net in which
abstract shapes become concrete situations.
Whereas in Fortuna, Ringdans and Wald, the connection between the shapes and
the titles is easily made, this is not so in the case of Die Liebenden. It is not easy
to associate the pointed, drop-like structures in white and red with a pair of
lovers. A further coordinate helps: in the second room of the gallery,
watercolours are shown from which the titles for the paintings are derived. They
are modelled on allegorical representations of medieval illuminations. The
structure, shapes and colours of amants dans un lit illustrate the translation that
took place from medieval representation to abstract painting.
The additional visual material places the paintings in a further referential space,
within which Brörmann confronts her paintings with the question of whether an
abstract painting can embody an allegory, which itself is an image of an already
abstract notion. And the beholder is called upon to ponder this question. Thus,
the end of the walk through the exhibition becomes, as it were, the starting point
of another walk, a second round of the game, this time with extended rules.
Text: Ferial Nadja Karrasch
Vernissage: Thursday, 8th September 2016, 06:00 – 08:00 p.m.
Exhibition: Friday, 9th September – Saturday, 22th October 2016
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Image caption: Clara Brörmann, Die Liebenden, 2016, oil on canvas, two parts, each: 90 x 140 cm
Exhibition pursuit of happiness – SCHWARZ CONTEMPORARY – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin
