Barbara Gross

Simone Lanzenstiel

10 Dec 2010 - 29 Jan 2011

© Simone Lanzenstiel
Untitled (Nr. 42), 2010
Acrylic and enamel spray on coated chipboard
32 cm x 33,5 cm
SIMONE LANZENSTIEL
somewhere around here - about this close
10.12.2010 - 29.1.2011

Simone Lanzenstiel is well known for her interventions and actions in public and private spaces. Spontaneously, she reacts to architectural details, picking up on various building elements - marks or relics such as cables and pipes - and transposes them into painting. A stay in New York, and her move to Berlin last year have inspired her: details of her new surroundings, such as cryptic scribblings or graffiti sprayed onto weathered walls, are incorporated into her pictures, and formulated in paint through a methodical process.

We are showing the latest canvases from this year. Thin, white ground makes it possible to see the weave of the canvases at times, as it runs down the surface in transparent streaks. Layers of white in diverse tones occasionally condense in patches, resulting in dribbles of paint. Colorful, arcing, and curving lines are broken up, painted over in white, and seem to vanish. Dark red, luminous blue, or pink nuances give the works a sense of rhythm; soft at times, mere indications at others, these subtle touches are occasionally intensified, becoming powerful accents. Lanzenstiel?s new paintings are persuasive in their balance and ease. Ephemeral-looking, but precise sedimentary layers are woven into an intriguing visual texture.

The canvases alternate with smaller works on MDF or layered chipboard, which are also rendered in acrylic and spray-on enamel. Traces of usage and damaged spots along the edges enhance the object-like character of the image supports, so that some even seem like found objects. Painted slats of different lengths are leaned up against the walls or jammed between the ceiling and floor, interfering with the self-referential quality of the paintings? surface planes. Lines wander out of the canvases to become independent drawings in space.

Simone Lanzenstiel (born 1970 in Ulm, lives and works in Berlin and Munich) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. In 2010, her work was seen in the group shows Malerei ist immer abstrakt at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, and the product of exchange, at the Texas Firehouse, New York and the Südhaus, Berlin. 2009: Pfartfinder Skulpturenprojekt, Stade. Solo shows: Abriss Müllerstrasse 22, Munich, 2007; kreis rund kreisen, Aquamarin, Munich, 2007; Fernab, Projektraum Marienhof, Munich, 2005. Lanzenstiel received a project grant from the Golart Stiftung in Munich, 2006; a grant from the Stipendium des Bayerischen Staatsministeriums for the Cité internationale des Arts Paris, 2003-2004; a DAAD grant for a stay in New York, 2003; and in 2007 she won first prize for public art at the Biozentrum, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich.
 

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