Way Out is going to be Franziska Schemel‘s first solo exhibition at gallery twenty-six, showcasing a spectacular selection of large- and small-scale works in acrylics respectively watercolor on canvas and wood as well as handmade deckle-edged paper.
Shemel, whose work is regularly presented in international galleries and at art fairs, and can be found in numerous public and private collections, graduated from Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design in 1990 and has since been awarded various art prizes and scholarships.
Opening on April 27th 2024 on our ground floor, what really constitutes the unique substantial feature of this exhibition, is the particular fascination, the special allure, of color, light and space, movement and dynamics as a synthesis – going far beyond “breaking out of darkness into brightness”: “For me, a picture has to ‘resonate’,” Schemel states, “I find myself fascinated by an idea, I keep thinking about it and try all sorts of things, and then something emerges and there‘s further and further organic development.”
In her pictorial objects, Franziska Schemel deals with living in urban space. She describes the paths within our everyday environment and extends them, adding a possible perspective via a photo, into the seemingly infinite without being aimless. The movements of everyday life are recognizable and perceptible in her works, the inner and outer areas, the daily comings and goings, are given a clear definition.
The artist assembles her own small-format photographs into her large-format panels (which means by far more than the painterly taking-up, the motivic or image compositional continuation of the photographic work beyond its edges), often depicting people at the intersection. The human figure – passers-by (never staged, always real) – people, each in their own world – is essential to the image as it “shows the way“, according to the artist. Thus a window opens through which Schemel draws the viewers‘ attention to the imaginary-illusionary within the real, reveals the artificiality of urban living environments, with all their sociological and psychological implications.
Recurring motifs, develloped and elaborated, are sights of the common place, of the unnoticed – urban sights that are thererfore not truly seen, as in looked at properly, in everyday life:
Corridors, entrances and exits, underpasses, stairs, subway stations – the spatial-architectural embodiment of transition, remain almost entirely beneath the surface of the urban threshold of perception and consequently of memory (on both inter- and intrapersonal level) and only reveal their spectacular nature upon closer inspection: The function of these architectural elements with their specific aesthetics is clear and yet these spaces – animated in this way – are always in a certain sense merely architectural catalysts: zero and pivot of transition in one: “a space that you enter in order to leave it again”.
The urban spatial situation is being shown as a kind of emblematic symbol for threshold situations (also in the psychological sense of liminal experiences and transitional phases and their impact): spaces of transition in which the routine process (of transportation, traffic, communication) is in a critical phase. The volatility, changeability and acceleration of these processes come into conflict with the solidity of built structures, due to both physical and psychological (criminological, sociological and planning) aspects, directly attributable tot he the complexity and diversity of spaces of transition.
There is a quiet, yet relentlessly concise, openness and delicacy about Franziska Schemel’s oeuvre, which sometimes even appears to be a downright spiritual quality, wich is primarily due to the technical sophistication of her visual idiom:
The pictorial composition and coloring are greatly reduced (simple forms and soothing colors (blue-yellow contrasts, black-grey-white, orange-red (rarely green because of the urbanity of the motifs), and the mixture of acrylic paint with pigments, stone powder and sand creates a rough and muted surface structure (pointing to the materiality of these works as well as setting a certain mood, an utterly specific emotional quality in accordance with a posture of seeming passivity) which – in contrast to the clear formal language of the architecturally inspired main motifs creates an unexpected tension – indeed a veritable field of energy.
This artist‘s style (in terms of technique, temperament and subject matter) is utterly unique; the fact that her paintings have few barriers to legibility, they invite access, not being deliberately hermetic, is one reason they exert such an appeal, albeit that their comlexity and ambiguousness emerges at second glance, drawing viewers in in an unmatched manner.
The radical quality of these pictures lies above all in their challenging the integrity of mass as distinct from individuality on the one hand, and of mass as distinct from space on the other: Schemel‘s freedom in the exploration of the suggestion of three-dimensional space, mass and void, line and plane, surface and depths, color and value – somehow detached from strictly representational means – playing off against each other, redetermines how picture space might be rethought via the integration of subject to surface (in addition to the combination of artistic media): surface and subject plus the respective idiosyncracies of photography and painting are coming together, thereby litterally and figuarively shedding new light on both the inescapability of the subjectivity of perception – the time, the place, the temperament plus the involved media (as defined by Marshall McLuhan) – and the subjectivity of inner experiences.
This two-dimensionality and simultaneous evocation of space opens up the possibility for viewers to engage in the conscious experience and reflection of threshold, liminal and transitorial experiences, their conditions, possibilities and limits, on various levels.
High Up
In Between
New York
Shadows
Endless
Hello ?
Somewhere
Upwards
Far Out
Into the Sun
Coffee to Go
