Katharina Gun Oehlert in the Museum Montanelli. On display will be her paintings and objects.
The themes are narrative in form: “The god of hares loves the bull goddess” or “Icarus”. A succession of dreamlike figures, cherubs and water ghosts seem remote from our mundane existence, although they soon find a place in the world of our fantasies and emotional experiences. Moreover, we discover so many abstractions in the picture that the figure pertains to them only symbolically. They always have in themselves something or other of the multivalency that is inherent in such topics. The interpretation is tinged with personal recollections and feelings.
Through skillful abstractions the border between external reality and an inner vision of the world is blurred. “Objective“ reality and subjective perception are two states of the human mind which permeate one another. These are the basic building elements of the picture.
The network structure unites the individual parts and in this way injects its own quality into the work.
This is equally valid for the objects “Frozen childhood”, “Icarus”, “Come – if you love”. Wires hold wires or feathers together. Wires also serve here as outlines and unite the parts into the whole. The remaining tension of a metal wire contorts the entire work, bends it and only from mere strength of memory is the expression formed.
Katharina Gun Oehlert uses mesh and its system. The artist herself ignores the intended layout and leaves the space to the expression. “Come – if you love” is a very airy cluster of wires, whose tension gives rise to the distances and inner space. The maze then only hints at the inner contours.
What the cut-up pictures have in common with the pictures that were subjected to no further treatment and which function as independent works of art is that colour is not applied in regular layers. Katharina Gun Oehlert applies colours with a piece of cloth and brush so finely it appears she had just rubbed them on gently. Even after repeated overpaintings compact surfaces do not form. Traces of colours lie lightly over one another like stains, they unite into motives, leaving an underlay that is always well visible. The emerging structures do not come across as being fixed, but are rather in an unsteady, spontaneous, gestural way.
At the same time the motives are not selected by chance, rather they are always in harmony with the chosen theme. Violence, harm and damage correspond to the destructive subject matter. They are profoundly based on human themes of existential experience by Katharina Gun Oehlert, but are at the same time filled with curiosity, sensibility and respect for creation. She shares this godly respect with the viewer, who humbly experiences the fateful transformations of the human being.
