Heike Ruschmeyer | Spurensuche

Kicking off the Autumn 2014 art season in Berlin, it is our
pleasure to welcome the Berlin painter Heike Ruschmeyer
to her fourth solo exhibition at EMERSON Gallery Berlin.
Ruschmeyer’s painting has the impact of a force of nature.
The only thing constant is change itself. In her work,
Ruschmeyer has spent decades exploring the contours of
death and violence in our society. As a virtual prodigy in
1993, the painter created a furor with her exhibition
Maßlose Zeit, the last exhibition at West Berlin’s now
legendary Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin. In this breakthrough
exhibit she offered over a hundred works mostly in
startlingly bright colors portraying the subjects of violent
death. Since that time, Ruschmeyer has offered series
confronting, among other topics, sexual violence, violence
against children, and suicide. All along the way, her
painterly aesthetic took new turns, from the explosive
drama of Germany’s Junge Wilden to subdued,
monochrome depictions in grey tones.

In her latest transition, the painter presents the scenes of
terrorist violence in Germany, from the infamous Rote
Armee Fraktion (RAF) attacks thirty years ago, to more
recent outburst by racist extremists. Ironically the painter’s
depictions of communal violence work even more intimately
than her more personal scenes of death. Viewers who lived
through time of the events experience a discomforting
sense of nostalgia. Younger viewers unfamiliar with the
events feel a sense of frozen history.
The paintings exude an often eerie stillness: the stillness of
contemplation, the stillness of death.

Complementing the paintings is Ruschmeyer’s contribution
to the Edition tradition at EMERSON Gallery Berlin –
economically priced works offered as exclusive limited
editions. The painter’s latest edition reveals an uncommon
aspect of her work, her use of text in paintings and
graphics. In this case, Ruschmeyer takes part in a dialogue
with the German WW I poet Alfred Lichtenstein.