GABRIELE BASCH pakt featuring ACHIM KOBE
15.4 - 8.5.2011
Gallery Kalhama&Piippo has the great pleasure to open the exhibition of Gabriele Basch (b. 1964, in Germany) whose works in the exhibition are accompanied by large scale watercolours of German artist Achim Kobe.
In her art, Gabriele Basch plays with the contrasts and tensions between the material and the intangible. New works in the exhibition are paper cutouts whose relief-like appearance invites the viewer to study the whole space from different angles.
The artist herself emphasizes the time that has flown through the works in the process of art making. Basch’s work begins with combining the visual motifs and fragments she finds in her every-day environment. The key words describing her artistic process are repetition, mirroring, transformation and chain reaction. The hand made working process winding through these attributes is slow. Drawing and cutting is followed by the act of painting, which is the last step in the process. Both the painted backside and the surface add another layer to the art piece. This initiates a unique dialogue between the added and the eliminated elements. However, the artwork will be visible in its whole dimensions only when hung on the wall. The wall is bound as part of the work by shadow reflections on it flowing through the openings of the cutouts. Thus, the surrounding space operates both the medium and the projective surface for the viewer. As result, the transparency of the tones creates a fragile and flowing touch of immateriality even to the biggest and brightest works of Basch.
At first glance the viewer notices the artist’s interest in organic forms, geometry and futuristic architecture. Basch uses details of unspectacular, mostly well known motifs. But, in the way she combines, splits and overworks them in uncountable layers, something completely new and extraordinary appears. The viewer’s imagination is a necessary accomplice to her body of work. Traditional cross stitch patterns turn into a virtual pixel space of tomorrow. We may also find a resemblance to an urban, even utopian, landscape construction, where movement, rhythm, colours, lights and tones are blended, “as if trying to capture the whole world in a single space”, as Friederike Fast has written. In addition, her works seem to remind us of the hard times of the present day where a strong appearance often hides the fragile and vulnerable.
Basch’s body of work interestingly discusses the issue of ornament, which is strongly rejected in the Western tradition. It shows how the ornament captivates us almost everywhere. Basch’s asymmetrical and abundant works bring forth the most mysterious ornaments of all – the ones in the nature. Like Basch’s process of the cut out paintings, breathes nature in the circulation of destruction and reconstruction.
- Pilvi Kalhama
