Press Release Susanne Ackermann gusts and clouds

Exhibition opening: Friday, 15 November 2013, 18:00-22:00
Exhibition: 16 November 2013 to 8 February 2014
Closed 20 December to 04 January

From the very beginning, Susanne Ackermann's artistic work has been characterised by a comprehensive exploration of highly conceptual, abstractly geometrical pictures. By now, her predominantly large-scale works on canvas examine patterns and structures, which form open spaces for thoughts and experiences – not the least for subjective memories of places, landscapes and natural phenomena. Through a multitude of layers of glazed paint Susanne Ackermann creates an effect of depth which makes her works oscillate between image surface and (surrounding) space, between tangible art and poetic associations.

The abstraction in Susanne Ackermann's paintings is less the result of the rational theories of modernity than her systematic approach to work. The initial basis for her paintings is formed by determining format and materials like, for example, type of surface and the brush size. During the work process up to 30 layers of highly diluted acrylic paint are applied. Here the basic creative idea is not the depiction of something real or intellectual; rather does she conceive colour and form as autonomous entities. In the course of this she does not abstract the world but the abstraction lets us come to conclusions about the world. The concrete aspect of her painting therefore is a result of the direct relation between the material and the manifestation of the picture.

Series of pictures are created in a process-like and rhythmic fashion, whose layering and overlaying gives rise to complex spaces. Spaces which seem to fluctuate, whose composition is elusive, which unsettle our gaze and demand we take our time to experience them. The title of the exhibition, gusts and clouds, also alludes to this: The interplay of gusts of wind and clouds – a driving force and a diaphanous volume – creates a dynamic process which gives rise to patterns and structures restricted by space and time. In Susanne Ackermann's paintings this process is never stagnant: The complexity of the structures she creates opens up spaces whose layers, although decelerated, continue to constantly overlap each other in the perception of the viewer.

The painter Susanne Ackermann lives in Karlsruhe, studied at the local Academy of Arts and was a master student of Professor Erwin Gross. Alongside numerous scholarships and stays abroad she has held teaching assignments in the last years at the Pforzheim and Mannheim Schools of Design. In 2011 she was awarded the Hanna Nagel Prize.