SCHWARZ Kirstin Arndt, Janet Passehl, Charlotte Posenenske, Michael Reiter
The Thomas Rehbein Gallery presents works by Kirstin Arndt, Michael Reiter, Janet Passehl, and Charlotte Posenenske in an exhibition curated in collaboration with Burkhard Brunn.
About "black"
When Kazimir Malevich painted the famous "Black Square" in 1913, he aimed to free painting from the obligation to depict the world. Non-objectivity in painting was his declared goal. This marked the beginning of so-called abstract art, which negates representation. Black-and-white photography and black-and-white film abstract away from all local colors that define the uniqueness and situational vibrancy of an object, a body, a landscape, or an atmosphere; everything appears—something we have long grown accustomed to—unreal because it is abstract. In contrast, color photographs are considered authentic. Family pictures today are in color. The black lines of graphics abstract from colors.
Initially, the purpose of drawing was to delineate an object from its environment through its contour, i.e., to identify it. The etching's hatching brought out the body of the object.
In this respect, graphics capture the practically important aspects of a body: outline, size, volume. It abstracts from its color, thus from its uniqueness. The physiognomist Lavater, famous during the Goethe era, sparked the trend of silhouette art, which, compared to the en face representation in black shadow outlines, always captures the profile as the unchanging, constant aspect of a face.
Black thus reduces complexity. Black serves as a means of reduction, abstraction, and concentration, and is therefore minimalistic. Before Vermeer recognized the contour as a perspective layering of color represented by a dark, tendentially black line, shadow was more or less regarded as black. As a shading, black makes the corporeality of an object recognizable. Black intensifies the hollowness of a body. From the experience that shadow overlays local colors and completely obscures visibility when it turns to night, the notion likely arises that Hades—the ancient Greek underworld—is dark, the so-called realm of shadows. Darkness is therefore associated with death. As the opposite of "light," "black" carries a negative connotation.
With the inescapable shadow, we always carry the mark of death with us. The shadow is a memento mori, but, also because it is a secondary, derived phenomenon in relation to physicality, it is not further considered in practical life. This is connected to the fact that in Western culture, black is the color of mourning. Black is the night in which everything disappears. Expressions like "Schwarzhandel," "Schwarzarbeit," and "Schwarze Kasse" indicate that something forbidden occurs in the dark, in secrecy. The saying "Ich sehe schwarz" expresses the view that something is not going to work. Here, black is an expression of nothingness. This nihilistic dimension is already inherent in black as an abstraction. The tendency towards nothingness and the general makes black ambivalent.
(Burkhard Brunn)
Special opening hours for DC OPEN 2014:
Friday, September 5, 2014
6-9 PM Gallery Opening
Saturday, September 6, 2014
12-8 PM Opening Hours
Sunday, September 7, 2014
12-6 PM Opening Hours