Das große Haus Selbst

The Big House Self

2014
Installation view at Galerie Tanja Wagner
Dispersion & spray paint on wall
ca. 536 x 376cm

Oil on linen | Wallpainting | Concrete sculpture | Willow branches, fabrics, foil & rope

In her current exhibition, Grit Richter shows new works which interrogate the representation of memories, emotions and lived situations. Her paintings are shifting between abstraction and figuration, between the immediacy of utopian landscapes and the momentariness of a snap-shot. Within her work, she is searching for a way to visualize universal feelings that function as aesthetic parables of our inner world. Das große Haus Selbst (The Big House Ourself) stands for each and everyone of us. It is a complex entity, which has been given many labels over time: essence, character, the subconscious, identity, the I.

To meet this complexity, Grit Richter leaves the canvas and expands her work into the space. Wall paintings, objects and installations join her paintings. The different media share one visual universe that is mostly two-dimensional and abstract. Nevertheless it always reveals some figurative elements which are often bizarre, humorous or soothing through their combination of colours, forms and material. Associative titles give the pieces a particular connotation. Richter uses the steady feedback of abstraction into figuration to create spaces of meaning allowing the viewer to find their own way to her work. In this she calls onto the part of our memory that one could define as collective consciousness: for her painting Milk & Honey she is taking on the topic of longing and its inherent futility by painting forms and colors which hint at a skyline, a sunset and neon lights.

Also remarkable in some of her paintings is the unpainted edge which turns the works into a stage setting or a picture postcards.  They are the reminder that we are witnessing only the attempt of capturing our inner worlds. Another recurring motif is the enclosed space in itself. For the exhibition Grit Richter will build a cocoon-like object, which is representative for the most hidden chamber inside of us, its content we can only guess. A likewise closed up atmosphere is conveyed through her concrete cubes: darkly pigmented castings made out of textile moulds. With their smooth polished surface they seem to be bursting of energy but yet impenetrable.

Press release Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin