apartment of artder kunst

From the catalogue "Square". The Marli Hoppe-Ritter collection

The central interest in Annekathrin Norrmann 's work is the painterly qualities of the material and how these may lead to new sensual experiences when combined with light This also extends to the way colour Infiltrates space, as can be seen in this untitled work from 2002. It consists of a Perspex case in which a bright canvas painting has been mounted flush to the back surface. The case itself has been matt polished and painted with a fine layer of pale green, while the centre of the canvas bears a loosely painted pale red square turned about its axis, and the rest of the surface has been coated in a white paint with a pink iridescent quality.
This object-picture creates a captivating effect. The combination and superimposition of painted canvas and coloured Perspex cube as a second layer of painting creates something that could not be achieved by conventional painting alone. The colours obtain an unfathomable luminosity, a chromatic shimmering, while the forms gain an unclearly locatable spatial depth. Thus the red square not only appears to float before the green glaze, but also to sink behind it, while simultaneously the light that is caught by the semi- transparent acrylic glass and glides along its irregular surface produces a sense of evanescence and constant change in the entire work.
The basic principle of this piece can in fact be described exactly. Norrmann is working here with two methods for creating colour: mixing using a palette, and the optical addition of colours, a technique that was already employed by the old masters that Norrmann so admires. However, this effect of blending two superimposed colours by the action of the incidental light to create a new tone is freed of any connection with representationalism, and elevates the phenomenon itself to the subject of her work. Simultaneously the vocabulary of Geometrical Abstraction, which she releases however from its rigorous artifice and lends a completely unforced ease helps the viewer to concentrate fully on the subject. The beholder for his or her part is suddenly confronted by a poetry that is not usually to be expected from an art based on geometry.

Andreas Pinczewski