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"Triologie of Gestures, 3x130x150/160cm, oil/ canvas, 2014"
In & Out - about the paradoxes in the work of Anke Schima
Anke Schima's work provokes a constant sway between the possibility of putting yourself into the pictures on the one hand and being excluded on the other hand from the often surreal-looking picture worlds. It is like first being baited and then being thrown out again. Figures and objects seem to be symbolically charged, in order to tilt into the abstract in the next moment. At the same time, you do not get the impression that everything is in wild disorder or there is neither top nor bottom. You rather feel like the characters want to express something in their gestures, as if something was distilled inside of them. But a closer look reveals that the faces are empty, the proportions are not right and the colors are shooting transversely, interior and exterior spaces are intermingled.
In the triology of gestures (2014), the space consists merely of a ledge on a black background. On each of the three paintings, you find a personcarrying out a gesture: either pressing her arms to her body, raising her arms to the sky or forming a semicircle. Although these gestures are expansive, the figures are not heroic. Their traits are tormented, their proportions are dis-harmonious. Instead of being connected with nature, as you find it in other symbolic painters' works like as Ferdinand Hodler, they stand at the abyss to nothingness. Only an emergency exit sign above the figures is illuminated in green and yellow. A paradoxical statement: Is there really a way out of here? Or is it meant to emphasize the situation's hopelessness?
The contradictory nature of the painting is a strong reminiscent of Gilles Deleuze's description of Francis Bacon's paintings, which emphasizes that Bacon succeeds in creating a zone where different movements and forces collide: figurative and abstract, light and dark, unicolored areas and lines or contours. He calls Bacon's pictures an operational field, a realism of deformation, and defines the task of painting "as an attempt [...] to visualize forces that are not visible." 1 Schima, being asked about her paintings, says that they are about "show things which are not visible in the real world, somewhere between visual perceptions and emotions. 'Forces' is an adequate word. " 2
Although in the pictures, forces are struggling against each other, some of the scenes depicted look like stills - they show situations that have been frozen at a certain point. The protagonists can not get out of them. There is also no coexistence of the figures, although they are arranged relative to each other. Many do not even have a face and can not communicate, although they do have a meaning. A paradoxical situation.
This multi-layeredness of the situations is also reflected in the way Schima works. The paintings are applied in several layers in glaze technique, which leads to the paintings having become denser in recent years. They are less transparent than previous works. At the same time, the stroke of brush has become more decisive, the colors more vigorous.
In the film work "Fluxus II" of 2012, Schima reveals the lengthy process of painting , extinguishing and repainting. In eight minutes, she encapsulated 1623 individual images of the same painting in different stages. In the end, the canvas is painted white again. The image disappears. The artist cheated us again.
Dr. Anna-Lena Wenzel,
Translated from german to english by Thorsten Mika
1 Deleuze, Gilles: Francis Bacon. Logik der Sensation. München 1995, S. 39
2 Aus einem mail-Interview mit der Künstlerin, 11.04.2016
Anke Schima's work provokes a constant sway between the possibility of putting yourself into the pictures on the one hand and being excluded on the other hand from the often surreal-looking picture worlds. It is like first being baited and then being thrown out again. Figures and objects seem to be symbolically charged, in order to tilt into the abstract in the next moment. At the same time, you do not get the impression that everything is in wild disorder or there is neither top nor bottom. You rather feel like the characters want to express something in their gestures, as if something was distilled inside of them. But a closer look reveals that the faces are empty, the proportions are not right and the colors are shooting transversely, interior and exterior spaces are intermingled.
In the triology of gestures (2014), the space consists merely of a ledge on a black background. On each of the three paintings, you find a personcarrying out a gesture: either pressing her arms to her body, raising her arms to the sky or forming a semicircle. Although these gestures are expansive, the figures are not heroic. Their traits are tormented, their proportions are dis-harmonious. Instead of being connected with nature, as you find it in other symbolic painters' works like as Ferdinand Hodler, they stand at the abyss to nothingness. Only an emergency exit sign above the figures is illuminated in green and yellow. A paradoxical statement: Is there really a way out of here? Or is it meant to emphasize the situation's hopelessness?
The contradictory nature of the painting is a strong reminiscent of Gilles Deleuze's description of Francis Bacon's paintings, which emphasizes that Bacon succeeds in creating a zone where different movements and forces collide: figurative and abstract, light and dark, unicolored areas and lines or contours. He calls Bacon's pictures an operational field, a realism of deformation, and defines the task of painting "as an attempt [...] to visualize forces that are not visible." 1 Schima, being asked about her paintings, says that they are about "show things which are not visible in the real world, somewhere between visual perceptions and emotions. 'Forces' is an adequate word. " 2
Although in the pictures, forces are struggling against each other, some of the scenes depicted look like stills - they show situations that have been frozen at a certain point. The protagonists can not get out of them. There is also no coexistence of the figures, although they are arranged relative to each other. Many do not even have a face and can not communicate, although they do have a meaning. A paradoxical situation.
This multi-layeredness of the situations is also reflected in the way Schima works. The paintings are applied in several layers in glaze technique, which leads to the paintings having become denser in recent years. They are less transparent than previous works. At the same time, the stroke of brush has become more decisive, the colors more vigorous.
In the film work "Fluxus II" of 2012, Schima reveals the lengthy process of painting , extinguishing and repainting. In eight minutes, she encapsulated 1623 individual images of the same painting in different stages. In the end, the canvas is painted white again. The image disappears. The artist cheated us again.
Dr. Anna-Lena Wenzel,
Translated from german to english by Thorsten Mika
1 Deleuze, Gilles: Francis Bacon. Logik der Sensation. München 1995, S. 39
2 Aus einem mail-Interview mit der Künstlerin, 11.04.2016