Analog

Our world is becoming increasingly digital. Banking is done via smartphone, photoshopped models greet us everywhere, and I only show the virtual ticket on my iPhone to the train conductor.

David Hockney, the British master of painting, has recently started painting with the iPad. What does this mean for painting?

Why do we still paint by hand?

For several years, Sophia Schama has been exploring how to translate the digital approach of Photoshop into the analog concept of painting and how these two ideas interact. The theme of nature and technology remains central. With Photoshop, one can alter, highlight, or erase motifs. Technology allows us to shape the world according to our own visions. After a rain shower, the grass grows in an instant, and the lawnmower can just as quickly change the appearance of the lawn.

While Schama previously created the spatial quality in her grass paintings through the juxtaposition and layering of cool and warm, light and dark color fields, she has recently taken a step further. She removes elements, allowing the wall behind her translucent foil works to become part of the image space. In her newest works, instead of using a mouse click, she drags a spatula through the paint on the prepared canvas, leaving only traces of the applied color. One can sense what lies beneath; it is almost gone, thus becoming the actual motif. Where in the computer one can use 'delete' to undo what has just been entered, she analogously repeats this with freshly created brush strokes. The wiping hand creates a new appearance just as quickly as the digital delete key. The act of wiping goes so far that edges and corners remain free, resulting in spatial, almost corporeal forms. Welcome to the analog space of Sophia Schama at Galerie m2a.

Vernissage: Friday, June 6, 2014, 7 PM