svenja deininger - federica schiavo gallery · 2016. 10. 5. · svenja deininger’s current show...

SVENJA DEININGER

PRESS REVIEW

Charles A. Riley II “Deininger Paintings From Eloquent Story at Marianne Boesky Gallery”, HamptonsArtHub, November 5, 2015

FEDERICA SCHIAVO GALLERY ROMA MILANO

Ludovico Pratesi “Pittura lingua viva”, Exibart, April 22, 2015


Media Farzin, Svenja Deininger’s “One Second Balance”, Art-agenda.com, February 6, 2013

by MEDIA FARZIN February 6, 2013

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Svenja Deininger’s “One SecondBalance”MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY, New York

January 17–February 16, 2013

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Svenja Deininger’s current show at Marianne Boesky Gallery has a quietness to it,

an air of minding its own business that can be initially disarming. From a

distance, the geometric abstractions look as pristine and empty as the gallery’s

walls: no external references, no critical provocations, nor expressive painterly

effects—nothing, it seems, to hold the viewer’s attention at all. But with closer

views, their formal goals become quite clear. Each painting plays various

perceptual elements against each other, balancing opacity against transparency,

turning surface into depth. Mass open spaces are girded with lines, and

abstraction is held in captivity, on the brink of representational possibility.

“One Second Balance” is the Vienna-based painter’s first solo exhibition in New

York, with fourteen untitled works all made in the previous year. The work is

installed to form a possible trajectory through Deininger’s process, with one

canvas often introducing a motif or element that is reprised in the next, in a

limited palette of blacks, blues, greens, and pinks. The change of scale between

the works only serves to further emphasize nuanced compositional details: as the

viewer draws closer, what initially appeared to be virgin white matte space turns

out have multiple layers and planes, and what looked to be a uniform dark stripe

is made up of darker inky masses. Everything seems to happen around the edges,

where crisp bands of textured paint hold shapes together and keep the eye in

perpetual tension as it skims the surface.

One painting stands out for its recognizable subject matter: a detail of white

canvas leaning against a dark wall, perhaps underlining the medium-specificity of

her project. Deininger’s quest for formal balance may be well in keeping with the

modernist boxing match between painterly surface and representational space,

but novelty is not one of her goals: “I don’t have something new to say, rather at

best something new to show,” she says in an interview. And her take is her own, a

pared-down experiment in modernist flatness that stands on its own through the

precarious complexity of her compositions, particularly when presented as a

series. The experience of Deininger’s paintings is no less articulate for lacking a

reference in the outside world—it may even be the outmoded, rarified quality of

painting today that underscores the methodical nature of her investigation into

surface effect.

One might say that Deininger’s paintings are abstract in the way that thinking is

abstract, as a continuous process of sorting through memories of things that, if it

is to succeed in solving the problem it has set itself, requires application and

intuition in equal measure. The minimalist genealogy of her work may be less the

humming screens of Agnes Martin than the methodical cubes of Sol LeWitt—but

without the mathematical single-mindedness. A constellation of fellow travelers

could be infinitely expanded upon, from Piet Mondrian to Mark Rothko, to the

cool abstractions of R.H. Quaytman and—an inevitable reference—the small

format paintings of Tomma Abts.

The final impression of Deininger’s paintings is less emptiness than a systematic

and varied plenitude. Everything fits together with the grooved perfection of a

jigsaw puzzle, albeit one that doesn’t hold together as a stable composition. Hard

edges are counterbalanced by organic accident; photographic contrasts of light

and dark hover over matte surfaces. In moving from one work to the next, the

viewer’s gaze learns to follow the dynamic rhythms of each visual space. More

than a logical investigation of a modest creative problem, the exhibition is also a

demonstration of what it means to think through painting.

Media Farzin is a New York based art historian and critic, currently pursuing a doctoral degree inart history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

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1 View of Svenja Deininger, Marianne Boesky Gallery, NewYork, 2013.

2 Svenja Deininger, Untitled, 2012.


4 View of Svenja Deininger, Marianne Boesky Gallery, NewYork, 2013.


Svenja Deininger’s “One Second Balance” | Art Agenda http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/svenja-deininger’s-“one-seco...

1 von 2 11.02.13 01:24

Art Agenda February 6, 2013 Page 1 of 2

Svenja Deininger’s “One Second Balance” Svenja Deininger’s current show at Marianne Boesky Gallery has a quietness to it, an air of

minding its own business that can be initially disarming. From a distance, the geometric

abstractions look as pristine and empty as the gallery’s walls: no external references, no critical

provocations, nor expressive painterly effects—nothing, it seems, to hold the viewer’s attention at

all. But with closer views, their formal goals become quite clear. Each painting plays various

perceptual elements against each other, balancing opacity against transparency, turning surface

into depth. Mass open spaces are girded with lines, and abstraction is held in captivity, on the

brink of representational possibility.

“One Second Balance” is the Vienna-based painter’s first solo exhibition in New York, with

fourteen untitled works all made in the previous year. The work is installed to form a possible

trajectory through Deininger’s process, with one canvas often introducing a motif or element that

is reprised in the next, in a limited palette of blacks, blues, greens, and pinks. The change of scale

between the works only serves to further emphasize nuanced compositional details: as the viewer

draws closer, what initially appeared to be virgin white matte space turns out have multiple layers

and planes, and what looked to be a uniform dark stripe is made up of darker inky masses.

Everything seems to happen around the edges, where crisp bands of textured paint hold shapes

together and keep the eye in perpetual tension as it skims the surface.

One painting stands out for its recognizable subject matter: a detail of white canvas leaning

against a dark wall, perhaps underlining the medium-specificity of her project. Deininger’s quest

for formal balance may be well in keeping with the modernist boxing match between painterly

surface and representational space, but novelty is not one of her goals: “I don’t have something

new to say, rather at best something new to show,” she says in an interview. And her take is her

own, a pared-down experiment in modernist flatness that stands on its own through the

precarious complexity of her compositions, particularly when presented as a series. The

experience of Deininger’s paintings is no less articulate for lacking a reference in the outside

world—it may even be the outmoded, rarified quality of painting today that underscores the

methodical nature of her investigation into surface effect.

One might say that Deininger’s paintings are abstract in the way that thinking is abstract, as a

continuous process of sorting through memories of things that, if it is to succeed in solving the

Amy Feldman, Whole, 80” x 90”, oil on canvas, 2010

The three paintings above have been produced over the course of two years.

When Roberta Smith states how Feldman’s paintings are not repeating the

past, it is true to some extent. They may not repeat the past, but they do

repeat themselves. And in their repetition these works become overly reliant

on their titles (Whole, Target, Owed). Once this much emphasis is put on

language, Feldmans’ paintings are left with fewer options for viewers to

interpret them.

Same Old Art http://sameoldart.tumblr.com/

9 von 48 20.02.13 00:15FEDERICA SCHIAVO GALLERY ROMA MILANO

The Artist: Svenja Deininger, Christie’s Real Estate Magazine, Portrait, 2014

t h e a r t i s t

sVeNJa DeiNiNGer“My work can be like a sentence,” says Svenja Deininger. “It is about combining single paintings in a space like there are single words in a sentence, and finally a story.” Google the Viennese artist (born in 1974) and you’ll find key phrases such as “form and color”, “primary abstraction”, and “focus on materials”. Deininger talks of “working in layers… repainting and uncovering,” and often begins a painting with several different base coats, building strata of semi-translucent whites and subtle grays, blues, and greens. At first her works may appear simple, but linger before one and light-dark transitions and surprising depth of space emerge. “I want the viewer to fall in love with a work, for it to catch their attention, and ideally to think about it again later.” Photograph by Jakob Polacsek

portrait

#F# www.christiesrealestate.com


Kristina Nazarevskaia, Svenja Deininger : One Second Balance. Exhibition Review, Galleryintell.com, February 12, 2013

SVENJA DEININGER AT MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY

SVENJA DEININGER: ONE SECOND BALANCE

EXHIBITION REVIEWby Kristina Nazarevskaia

There are paintings that confront you with a strong statement as soon as you enter the space – worksby Kusama, Richter, Sherman, or Basquiat are bold, loud statements that demand the viewer’simmediate and all-encompassing attention. And then there are works that draw you in with theirunderstated and layered complexity that requires careful consideration and concentration. SvenjaDeininger‘s work falls solidly into the second category.

Her disciplined palette is permutated throughout the exhibition at theMarianne Boesky gallery in Chelsea where the artist is having her firstsolo exhibition. The semi-translucent whites, subtle blues, cool greensand grays flow and slide along crisp boundaries, sometimes apparent,sometimes hidden. A seemingly all-white painting soon reveals itself tohave a multi-planed surface with carefully defined fields that are notpre-determined but are arrived at organically. The longer you interact withthe painting the more it reveals. Lines and ridges appear creating newangles, paths and connections where none existed moments ago.Pictorial elements realign with each new discovery, waxing and waning in

significance as the kaleidoscope of Deininger’s curves, lines and fields continues to shift. Viewed froma short distance, a unique motion pattern becomes apparent within each painting – a patterndetermined by the spacial relationship between the primary pictorial elements.

That said, there seems to be no compositional pre-detemination in any ofthe works besides the elementary structure. The rest is clearly built up asthe artist considers each successive layer and its relationship to thepre-existing compositional elements and of course the canvas itself. Like aconsiderate and attentive storyteller, Svenja Deininger often leaves aportion of the canvas bare of paint. Whether a strip along the margins, or abolder field of raw canvas, these “omissions” read rather like windows intothe origins of the work. The technique leads the viewer to reverse theartist’s natural process and approach the painting from the point ofcompletion re-tracing the steps, layer after layer to arrive at the point oforigin.

TONY CRAGG AT MARIAN

GOODMAN GALLERY. ART BASEL

MIAMI BEACH 2012

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MIAMI BEACH 2012

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TERMINUS. ART MIAMI 2012

An rare realistic work by the artist identified

with minimalism and pure abstraction - a 1903

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interpret them.


9 von 48 20.02.13 00:15


Viktor Witkowski, Svenja Deininger : Against the Formulaic, Sameoldart.tumblr.com, February 18, 2013

SAME OLD ARTABOUT ME ASK ARCHIVE RANDOM RSS SEARCH

18TH FEB 2013 | 1 NOTE

SVENJA DEININGER: AGAINST THEFORMULAIC

I was looking forward to seeing Svenja Deininger’s exhibition One Second

Balance at Marianne Boesky Gallery for a while. Surprisingly, while wandering

the many districts and neighborhoods of New York, you will only occasionally

run into the work of an artist who is not part of the city’s art scene. New York,

the melting pot of cultures, does not always reflect its diversity in the art

shown there.

Timm Ulrichs, Hornbeam with Concrete Flower Pot, 1969

Svenja Deininger, who was born in Vienna, received her formal training in

Germany. In 1996 she attended the Kunstakademie Münster and then

continued her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2000. Before Berlin


1 von 48 20.02.13 00:15



became cool, Düsseldorf’s academy was one of the most prestigious art

schools in Germany, attracting students like Imi Knoebel, Anselm Kiefer,

Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Katharina Fritsch. Münster is

a different story. It is safe to say that its academy is well below the radar even

though it has some excellent professors like Deininger’s former teacher Timm

Ulrichs. I could not help but suspect that his conceptual and often tongue-

in-cheek pieces must have been formative to Deiniger’s early years as an

artist, since her rigorous practice is often infused with play.

Svenja Deininger, Untitled, oil on canvas, 2012

It is not much of a stretch to compare Deininger’s paintings to Tomma Abts’

work. For one there is the small scale that both share. Abts’ canvases are

generally about 18 inches by 15 inches. Deininger, to the contrary, is not

attached to one particular size. Her paintings can measure 20 by 25 inches

and sometimes they reach up to over 80 inches in width. Her strength though

lies in the paintings that are about the size of a human head or torso. They are

intimate, they are compact, and they easily lock in the viewer’s attention.


2 von 48 20.02.13 00:15



Tomma Abts, Tewes, oil on canvas, 2010

Tomma Abts considers color in relation to the layers and forms that she

carefully builds up over time. Svenja Deininger stays close to the surface of

her unprimed canvases. She works faster, with drawing and painting often

appearing together. Her conceptual take on this medium materializes in shape

of the hard, taped edges that separate thicker layers of paint from thin

washes. Sometimes graphite lines make their way across a painted area.


4 von 48 20.02.13 00:15




Deininger’s work is as much about the improvisational aspect of painting as it

is about finding closure through that process. The question:”When do I stop

painting?” has many answers in painting. In her 2012 review of Amy

Feldman’s solo-show Dark Selects, Roberta Smith observed that “a kind of

back-to-basics abstraction characterized by simple forms, not much color and

an emphasis on process is attracting a lot of younger painters right now. The

renewed faith in form is refreshing, and the starting-over feeling is

understandable at a moment when so much about art seems up for grabs. But

such reductionism can also feel both undernourished and uninformed.”


5 von 48 20.02.13 00:15



Amy Feldman, Pressure Points, 80” x 80”, oil on canvas, 2012

Although Smith also points out how Feldman’s work is neither undernourished

or uninformed, I started wondering how one can tell an undernourished

painting from a “nourished” or rich painting.

Both Feldman and Deininger reduce their paintings to a handful of attributes

that can be described in terms of shape (trapezoids, paraboles, etc.), color,

line and process (drips in Feldman’s, underpaintings and raw canvas in

Deininger’s case). But their painterly reductions could not be more different

from each other. Feldman displays what are essentially organized gestures.

This is painting that stops before it has even begun. Deininger, to the contrary,

manages to use her reductive approach to set up a painting that withstands

the corrosive nature of reduction.


6 von 48 20.02.13 00:15




Another advantage of Svenja Deininger’s work is how it resists becoming

formulaic. Her paintings belong together and share technical and optical

similarities, but they never cease to surprise and they always shift, change

gear, sometimes more, sometimes less. They are highly mobile paintings,

restless in their ever-revolving combination of bare and painted surface;

flexible in their application, highly inventive and despite their minimalist

aesthetic and palette, they are free of ideological attachements to one or

another school.


7 von 48 20.02.13 00:15



Amy Feldman, Owed, 80” x 80”, oil on canvas, 2012

Amy Feldman, Target, 84” in diameter, 2011


8 von 48 20.02.13 00:15










interpret them.


9 von 48 20.02.13 00:15




When reduction becomes a field for painting to tackle, the trickiest of tasks is

to find out how much reduction leaves us with too little. When do we know

that we have entered an area that does not show the endless possibilities of

painting but its truncated beginnings?

Looking back at Svenja Deininger’s first solo-show in New York, her paintings

exude a confidence without ever being caught up in it. She creates works of

immense exactitude at once thought and felt. In her ability to pick up on every

bit of material opportunity that develops throughout the painting process,

Deininger has presented a body of work closer to virtuosity than improvisation.

To look at her canvases is to witness painting as vital practice with many


10 von 48 20.02.13 00:15


Caleb De Jong, Svenja Deininger ‘One Second Balance’ Marianne Boesky Gallery, Thoughtsthatcureradically.com, January 21, 2013

Thoughts That Cure RadicallyCaleb De Jong

MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013

Svenja Deininger ‘One Second Balance’ Marianne Boesky Gallery

Artists pluck from the past and refashion the old into the new. German

born and Vienna based Svenja Deininger is an artist who has taken the

relatively small, in her case diminutive canvases of bars of color, white

and grey shapes attended by errant marks and the diagonal line, and

creates a hushed visual experience. Borrowing from the spiritually tinged

formalism of Malevich’s Russian abstraction, Deininger’s grey hued

canvases fall in the space between complete painterly independence and

a predetermined language. Instead, Deininger allows her paint, whose

consistency runs from the stained thin to the toothpaste thick, to abrade

and bleed into scumbled fields of neutralized color. Improvised yet

constricted, Deininger’s paintings act as a 21st Century intimist version of

Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series. Coincidentally timed with MOMA’s

Inventing Abstraction, The Met’s Matisse in Search of True Painting

exhibition and the Guggenheim’s Picasso Black and White, Deininger’s

first New York City exhibition coheres along a contemporarily reinterpreted

notion of chance, paint and the doggedly hand-made that is equally at

home in Chelsea and early Twentieth Century Europe.

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Thoughts That Cure RadicallyCaleb De Jong

MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2013

Svenja Deininger ‘One Second Balance’ Marianne Boesky Gallery

Artists pluck from the past and refashion the old into the new. German

born and Vienna based Svenja Deininger is an artist who has taken the

relatively small, in her case diminutive canvases of bars of color, white

and grey shapes attended by errant marks and the diagonal line, and

creates a hushed visual experience. Borrowing from the spiritually tinged

formalism of Malevich’s Russian abstraction, Deininger’s grey hued

canvases fall in the space between complete painterly independence and

a predetermined language. Instead, Deininger allows her paint, whose

consistency runs from the stained thin to the toothpaste thick, to abrade

and bleed into scumbled fields of neutralized color. Improvised yet

constricted, Deininger’s paintings act as a 21st Century intimist version of

Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series. Coincidentally timed with MOMA’s

Inventing Abstraction, The Met’s Matisse in Search of True Painting

exhibition and the Guggenheim’s Picasso Black and White, Deininger’s

first New York City exhibition coheres along a contemporarily reinterpreted

notion of chance, paint and the doggedly hand-made that is equally at

home in Chelsea and early Twentieth Century Europe.

FOLLOW BY EMAIL

Email address... Submit

Thoughts That Cure Radically

Gefällt mir 83

TWITTER

Thoughts That CureThoughtsThatCur

Join the conversation

Caleb De Jong

I am an artist, writerand educator basedin New York City

View my complete profile

ABOUT ME

▼ 2013 (1)

▼ January (1)

Svenja Deininger ‘OneSecond Balance’ MarianneBoe...

► 2012 (40)

► 2011 (78)

BLOG ARCHIVE

ThoughtsThatCur Thoughts That CureRadically: Svenja Deininger ‘OneSecond Balance’ Marianne Boe...thoughtsthatcureradically.com/2013/01/svenja…8 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

ThoughtsThatCur My review of SvenjaDeininger's first one person exhibitionin New York City currently in view atMarianne Boesky... fb.me/24RjvxAly8 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

artinstitutechi "For an Impressionist topaint from nature is not to paint thesubject but to realizesensations."—Paul Cézanne #birthday...10 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

NationalGallery Happy birthday toCézanne, born on this day in 1839!Cézanne's work was discovered by theParis avant-garde during the 1890s.11 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite

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Svenja DeiningerUntitled, 2012

Oil on canvas19 3/4 x 19 5/8 inches 50 x 50 cm

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Will Heinrich, Svenja Deininger ‘One Second Balance’, The New York Observer, January 29, 2013The New York Observer January 29, 2013 Will Heinrich Page 1 of 1


Susanne Jäger, The Harmony of Disturbing Factors, Artmagazine.cc, March 27, 2010Artmagazine.cc March 27, 2010 Page 1 of 1 “The Harmony of Disturbing Factors” Svenja Deininger and Julius Koller at Galerie Martin Janda By Susanne Jäger The current exhibition at the Galerie Martin Janda presents Svenja Deininger’s suggestive picture puzzles, set between abstraction and figurativeness. The artist, born 1974 in Vienna, predominantly sees her works – for the most part small-format compositions – as atmospheric spaces, even in photographs of concrete places oftentimes influenced the starting point of her work. In her works, which are based on geometric of “space, light, which makes it partially visible”, as well as “forms of architecture”: the ground coat of the canvas, mainly in beige, brown or blue tones, are not overlaid with the actual painting, but are an integral part of the compositions. Together with the additional layers of oil paint – which are often square, triangular or in other forms, are characteristic for Deininger’s work in diverse gradations of white and black, and result in a plastic, collage-like effect. In some instances, the geometrical rigour is lessened: y removing colour, which manifests itself in the form of sharply jagged irregularly broken lines, juxtaposed by unexpectedly precisely positioned, smoothly blurred circles and lines. To achieve the “correct balance, respectively unbalance” of a picture composition, Deininger purposely integrates disturbing factors: by positioning forms directly at the edge of the picture or with the help of colour elements positioned as a counterpoint – as for example in one of the works in a radiant Yves Klein-blue-, which ultimately balances the entire picture. Deininger’s individual style best manifests itself in her reduced works. Abandoning any superficial speculation, the artist creates strong association-spaces through the subtly oscillation between two- and three-dimensionality. The ambivalent undertone shapes the consistent suspense: the atmospheric range of Deininger’s space world’s comprises both a protective function from the outside as well as a certain threat-potential, and aesthetically mirrors insinuations of the seeming idyll of the 50’s as well as the futuristic impression, which surmises the homelessness of an uncertain future. On the gallery’s lower floor, a small display is devoted to Julius Koller, the old master of succinct subversive humour, with his works spanning from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. They include the constantly repeating elements of his work: such as the question mark or a UFO – as well as a real communist roll of toilet paper from 1978.


Sabine B. Vogel, EXTRA. A Conversation with Svenja Deininger, from “Svenja Deininger : Neue Arbeiten”, Remaprint, Vienna, 2009

EXTRA. A Conversation with Svenja Deininger By Sabine B. Vogel Interview from Svenja Deininger: Neue Arbeiten. Vienna: Remaprint, 2009. Sabine B. Vogel: You studied in Münster under Timm Ulrichs, then at the Düsseldorf Academy under Albert Oehlen. Why did you choose such different artistic approaches successively? Svenja Deininger: Timm Ulrich’s conceptual stance interested me, his class was exciting, but the seventies artistic orientation towards context didn’t really correspond to my interests. Especially since the problems and themes were often repetitive. Albert Oehlen, on the other hand, was always searching for new approaches, while also constantly questioning everything – I often chose something that didn„t exactly align with my work, but which interested me and aroused my curiosity. Although the choice of Oehlen’s class was made rather subconsciously, in retrospect several aspects emerged for me which made me feel like it was the right decision. His elusiveness, his habit of turning things inside out while still showing his colou rs is very close to me. This extra something which characterizes Oehlen for me is very much in keeping with my views. SBV: Extra something? SD: In my painting it is an extra when I start with colors or shapes that I feel like resisting. Then I work at them, until everything is in the right balance or imbalance for me. For example, I place a form directly on the painting’s edge, without cutting it off, or I create a balance with a tiny shape or colored area that seems to be an interference factor. SBV: Was the decision for Albert Oehlen likewise one for painting? SD: In Düsseldorf I didn’t paint. I built models, parts of which were painted, but which were presented as photographs. At that time I also noticed that conceptual art doesn‟t suit me, because I slip into dogmatic or didactic forms. I don’t mean to claim that I have something new to say, rather at best something new to show. And certainly everything today is new, shifted in time and made by a different author, but novelty doesn’t really interest me. I don’t want to spend all of my time wondering if something is new enough.



SBV: But your painting doesn’t seem intuitive and expressive to me, instead it seems more conceptual? SD: That is true inasmuch as I am conscious of my paintings, of each one. I also grapple with certain questions, but I do not proceed dogmatically. SBV: Which questions? SD: Questions that I have been engaged with since my course of studies, and before then. Compositional aspects, technical considerations that should lead to a painting and not to studies. Questions of spatiality, painting bases, priorities and the path the eye takes, the alternation between visual stimuli and other levels of a painting, between pattern and space – and time and time again the extra. SBV: Do you start out with sketches, particularly regarding the extra? SD: No, not at all. Often I begin with at least three different base coats, which already determines a lot. But painting is an intuitive process. Through abstraction I have won the freedom not to have to explain or declare myself. In my figurative painting people served this purpose. They were not portraits, it was not about the individuals, they were only an occasion, and a justification to paint. I have completely overcome that, and s o also the narrative aspect of painting – because even then I didn’t want to handle a specific subject. SBV: But your titles are narrative and associative? SD: In the new pieces, since over a year, that has not been the case. The most recent title was New Coating, for one of the smaller pieces – that summarizes my two approaches to painting. With the first one I start with figurative moments, which I keep in the back of my mind while painting. The other is precisely reversed, I begin with abstract forms, see something in them, and proceed towards that through painting. Even if both approaches always exist with equal importance, a tendency has developed towards the smaller paintings being made according to the first procedure and the larger ones according t o the second. For both approaches it is important to me that painting can be seen as a process, when an old image surfaces like a collage, and one often cannot tell which layer is on top and which on the bottom. This is why shapes of frames often appear, and white areas suggesting light sources that usually are the pure base coat. This is how spatiality develops, not as a translation of our physical reality into painting, not as colors forming a symbolic language, but as atmosphere – that’s why they aren’t really abstract paintings. SBV: The spaces sometimes have an almost sacred feel, they don’t seem empty, but filled with a dense quietness – is that what you describe as atmosphere? SD: Yes, even if I just paint a tiny square, one can feel a space. I alw ays had a propensity for pathos – when I seek something very reduced, it is often already opulent



for other people. The Age of Decadence was also once a subject of my painting, when I started out with people and wanted to bring more is more as an antithesis of the universal maxim less is more to the boil. Now it is covering and uncovering, priming, masking and grinding, the shapes and colors that transport that, only frameworks or colored areas that refer to the painting and create this emotive atmosphere. It is also important that the paintings don’t look made, which is why I forgo visible brush strokes and any kind of gestural style. I have always liked the Konrad Klapheck quote: “Paintings that look like they fell from the skies already completed.” SBV: Why did you decide on two small formats? SD: I used to tend towards large-format works, rather figurative, also opulent and yet still spaces with different layers. Even then I used to paint the small ones as attributes to the large ones. Simultaneously, I started to first leave out the people, then the other figurative aspects, and finally the large formats. Something that especially interests me is the concentration a small painting can have within a space. The two formats that I am currently using als o differ decisively. Within the larger ones the horizontal axis tends to define the composition, in the smaller ones the vertical axis does. The large formats are made more spontaneously, the small ones take up something from reality more frequently. To move to the limits of painting is an important theme for me, bringing painting to a final terminal is not, many before me have already elaborated that brilliantly, I don’t have to do that. I prefer to deal with issues within the scope of painting. With shapes. With squares and triangles. I have problems with organic shapes. SBV: Doesn’t one see organic, associative forms time and again in your small format paintings? SD: That’s true. When I show a series of pieces, there is usually one more figurative one among them, an anchor for the viewpoint. SVD: Do you paint a series of paintings beforehand? SD: No, initially individual pieces. For my exhibitions I generally make new pieces. Abstraction allows me a freedom through which incidental moments can occur, that I retain or follow. At the end I choose groups from the picture pool. SBV: When doing that, do you also follow the extra-concept? SD: That could be. Since I make new pieces for each show, that then do belong together thematically, I try to achieve tension between pieces of various emphasis in the way I hang the paintings, to incorporate an interference factor here also. For example, that can be a faintly silhouetted person among a row of abstract pieces. Whether extra or not.


S. Medits, An Interview With Svenja Deininger, 2014

How would you describe your work? My work can be like a sentence. It is about combining single paintings in a space like there are single words in a sentence and finally in a story. In their combination, there is often a range of intensity. It is about the moment when to stop working on a painting. In this sense, I see them as ongoing works. There are often paintings worked on over years, as well as those that happen after a short period of working. On first viewing, the works largely seem to be very straight and logical. Once you spent time looking at them, you realize they are not. I wouldn’t describe my work as abstract paintings, though I couldn’t see them being described as figurative either. It is more like a visualization of a general, higher idea, and with its materiality and layers, like a concrete description without bringing the idea to a physical appearance. Mind and intuition are both involved in the process, which has no pre-determind ending. A conscious decision not to fall into methodologies turn to welcoming the reoccurrence of a problem or chance. My practice is a sort of negative form of excavation. I think that my works are images that cannot be thought up this way, they are the result of a process-like way of working. Like trying to give an impulse at the same time than a reaction. What is the starting point for a piece? There are no predefined image ideas. The starting point for a painting stems often from the real: a shadow, a colour, a situation or a quote of another painting, which means that I try to remember while painting. Sometimes I repeat one thought or one starting point, but I dont work in series. Occasionally, I start with nothing or simply continue working an existing painting. My interest is in how a painting can change. I cannot look at it for the first time again but I can notice something different while trying to repeat my first thought. I often start out with a form; I work in layers—coatings of colors and materials, I repaint and uncover. Primer, raw canvas, opaque areas, and varnished parts convey various materialities; the visible surface of a painting is the result of the many underlying layers which often become visible at the edges of an image as overlays. At times, an unexpected line or drawing appears on the image area, consciously placed as a memory or quotation of a previous idea, which was covered by new layers in the process of painting. While working on a show, I have a general concept often related to the exhibition space. For example, the exhibition’s title of my recent soloshow, Pendant. A pendant is a counterpart, a complement, or an equivalent. I referred to it as a “coercive counterpart”: One part adds something that the other part does not have. This pendant can be in the same room, in the same exhibition, but it can also exist elsewhere, only in thoughts or memory. It can be vicariousness, an entire exhibition space or just a specific part in a painting, which finds its equivalent in a different part. How do you want the viewer to feel when they see a work? Ideally, I want to define the way of the viewer in an exhibition space similar to the way one you around in one painting. Like I want the viewer unconsciously trying to find related works, finding perhaps a work which describes another one that might be more an idea or even looking for the counterpart of another work which might not be there. I want the viewer to fall in love with a work; one they wouldn’t have imagined to be interested in at all, but because it is surrounded by others, this one catches their attention and ideally leads him/her think about it later. Generally I am interested in the concentration and intensity a very small work can have in a large space. Such works can prompt the viewer to move closer to the image, to take a closer look; they do not meet concrete expectations, no technical effect is revealed. On the way, it is possible that viewers might forget why they moved closer, and see something different. But what do they see when they go back again? Both?


svenja deininger - federica schiavo gallery · 2016. 10. 5. · svenja deininger’s current show...

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