The Space Between Us

Installation view at Galerie Tanja Wagner

2018

The Space Between Us refers to the imaginary space between two or more people. This space is sometimes experienced as a distance or void, but also as a vastness and abundance. In here, we communicate–with language and non-verbally with facial expressions, gestures and perhaps emphatic or even telepathic. Everything goes haywire in this space, many things happen at the same time and with words we capture only a very small part of those inner movements.

Grit Richter is constantly working on a visual vocabulary that finds translations for everything we can not say. Besides the ordered paths of language, there is this pre-linguistic space in us and between us, which is governed by simultaneity, ambivalence and disorder. The artist explores this chaotic state, measures its extent, its possibilities and its beauty – and begins to translate. With a rich vocabulary of shapes, colors, and materials, she develops a pictorial language system that is primarily abstract, yet always contains figurative allusions that seem familiar to us. Through this, something develops which can perhaps best be described as an “anthropomorphic pull”: a feeling of knowing, a sympathy for what we are looking at; because it seems to be a part of us.

Her multidisciplinary approach – consisting of painting, objects, murals, neon and textile work – leads to exhibitions in which we are surrounded by this pre-linguistic, anthropomorphic system. Although each work can stand by itself, the individual parts form a whole, a force field of associations. We are invited to enter this force field. Through her translations, Grit Richter succeeds in bringing very personal moments into a generally understandable form and while decoding her visual language system, we can rely on our emotional intelligence and trust our associations. Do we feel harmony? Conflict? Do we see figures? Shapes that remind us of something? A color combination that works emotionally?

In Richter’s new works, powerful and vibrant colors appear more than usual. Sometimes they are applied on black, ungrounded fabric, which increases their luminosity even more and creates a cosmic spatiality. Like planets, the picture elements revolve around each other and form a constellation. Sometimes I Feel So Disconnected is the name of one of these paintings, on which two indicated arms try to caress the rest of the depicted elements. In To The Moon And Back, a connection seems to succeed and a sense of intimacy radiates out of the painting.

In some paintings, the fabric has undergone various dyeing and bleaching processes and is used as the painting background. The resulting structures have a very lively appearance and Richter forms the idea for the paintings through dialogical process with its carrier material. Here, Richter shows a joy in experimenting, as we know from good-humored children, who are guided by their impulses and invent an endless, constantly evolving game. The poetic titles take the language back to Richter’s world of images, but their function is less a description than the extension of association.

Grit Richter’s imagery is an invitation to connect with and explore our own inner world. It offers us an intuitive approach to art, and at best we experience how much we can rely on our emotional intelligence – when looking at art, but also in many other situations in life.

Press release Galerie Tanja Wagner, 2018