X/14/15
Looking at Rebekka von Zimmermann’s paintings simultaneously means getting involved in the act of reading. Her recent body of work shows a deep investment in semantic interests: the narrative structures of modernist writing, for example, or the constructions of signs and symbols in exotic language and culture. One of the conceptual frameworks for this exhibition is provided by her design of a sign system for a fictional `other´ culture: The Society of Soon Foundation.
Another important reference is poetry: Von Zimmermann’s method involves writing poems reflecting on her painting. The visual arrangements of concrete poetry are important too: for this exhibition, the artist combines her paintings in a room-encompassing installation, in which each individual painting functions as a kind of abstract visual phoneme. Together, these seperate elements form larger constellations - rhythmically composed groups of works, painted in a variaty of formal and textural approaches.
Recurring elements in Von Zimmermann’s paintings are small sign-like motifs that are staking out a territory somehwere between Matt Mullican and medieval heraldry. There are large scale, sharp-edged, cool Pop-like paintings of letters: a large one depicts an `R´overlaid with a `C, the letters cropped by the edges of the frame, as if to suggest an expansive nature, a longing for connections to the world outside of the canvas. Other paintings show more gestural abstract forms, although they rarely are the result of free, unfiltered expression or impulse. Even these looser compositions are considered constrcutions, a product of relational intentions: meant to be part of a preconceived grander sheme. In this sense, Von Zimmermann’s paintings can be understood on relation to the Gesamtkunstwerk-aspect of opera or theater. She `performs´her paintings as fragments to become whole in a coherently and precisely designed scenography, creating a hybrid space of autonomous painting and theatrical decor in which the spectator finds his/her gaze returned in a state of heightened self-awareness.
Text: Xander Karskens
Another important reference is poetry: Von Zimmermann’s method involves writing poems reflecting on her painting. The visual arrangements of concrete poetry are important too: for this exhibition, the artist combines her paintings in a room-encompassing installation, in which each individual painting functions as a kind of abstract visual phoneme. Together, these seperate elements form larger constellations - rhythmically composed groups of works, painted in a variaty of formal and textural approaches.
Recurring elements in Von Zimmermann’s paintings are small sign-like motifs that are staking out a territory somehwere between Matt Mullican and medieval heraldry. There are large scale, sharp-edged, cool Pop-like paintings of letters: a large one depicts an `R´overlaid with a `C, the letters cropped by the edges of the frame, as if to suggest an expansive nature, a longing for connections to the world outside of the canvas. Other paintings show more gestural abstract forms, although they rarely are the result of free, unfiltered expression or impulse. Even these looser compositions are considered constrcutions, a product of relational intentions: meant to be part of a preconceived grander sheme. In this sense, Von Zimmermann’s paintings can be understood on relation to the Gesamtkunstwerk-aspect of opera or theater. She `performs´her paintings as fragments to become whole in a coherently and precisely designed scenography, creating a hybrid space of autonomous painting and theatrical decor in which the spectator finds his/her gaze returned in a state of heightened self-awareness.
Text: Xander Karskens
![„ER // : S / 1963 [K&K!]: 2015” 2014. Oil on canvas, 200 x 240cm](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4d56583387485d714b761d3b15bcb1c0f1a324ec5f8eacd7b63229d89f3472c1/3RvZ_13.jpg)
