The artist's first solo show in Switzerland at Gallery Ann Mazzotti in Basel will present over 12 new paintings reflecting the fragility of interpersonal relationships through distinctive color painting, a sensory visual language on linen canvas.
On view through June 26, 2023
May 3, 2023 (Basel, Switzerland) – Contemporary Berlin-based artist Nadine Schemmann announces ‘No Universe Among Us’ at Gallery Ann Mazzotti in Basel on view through June 26, 2023.
The exhibition marks the artist's first solo show in Switzerland, following the strand of her expressive textile paintings exhibition at Haverkampf Leistenschneider Gallery in Berlin in February 2023. Coinciding with Art Basel, the exhibition will present over 12 new works of Schemmann’s distinguishable large-scale stretched and unstretched sewed linen canvases as well as two site-specific installations, one specially created for the gallery’s interior and the other one gracing its exterior. These new paintings are Schemmann’s continuation of her visual color diary, a distinctly personal technique connected to her view and expression of people, situations and things.
Nadine Schemmann's works are a representation of encounters, conversations and lived moments. In her sculptures and pictures, she assembles the components, which constitute an encounter: the sounds, feelings and colors. For this purpose, she first dyes or bleaches fabrics, which she then sews together to the desired size. At times, the edges of the fabric thereby created already structure Schemmann’s working surface, set boundaries, while announcing the upcoming encounters, namely the color on the linen fabric. On the processed canvases, commonly located on the floor, Schemmann shoots ink, diluted oil paint, and chlorine bleach. The dispersing paint and the bleach tend to create two or multiple spheres, which converge on the fabric. While sometimes approaching each other, at other times they surround each other or merge until it is no longer possible to tell where one color begins and the other ends. The fabrics are not always stretched on frames. Often, they hang openly in the room. In this way, the loosened and the stretched conditions complete each other. Thus, the moment of an encounter is not static, but contingent; it moves and respires, even after the oeuvre’s finalization. In the process, the elusive moment of an encounter becomes tangible. This moment, which is always about closeness, distance, boundaries, and how these can be subject to transgression.
From a formal perspective, Schemmann’s textile tableaus relate to the Color Field Painting. Unlike Mark Rothko or Helen Frankenthaler’s oeuvre, however, to which Schemmann’s work seems to refer at first glance, her paintings do not originate from space or landscape itself, but from the space-in-between resulting from two people’s encounters. Her paintings are therefore about the voids, which remain free of color restricted through cutting edges and seams. It is precisely these interstices, at which the intention to depict an encounter emerges most clearly. As per the religious philosopher Martin Buber, the encounter is significant in the distinction of the human being human. The encounter lies the foundation for the dialogue and without dialogue there is no connection between people. "All human life is about confrontation," says Buber, and instead of willing to change or convince the other, the attempt to understand him or her in depth is what life is all about. "When we stop interacting, it is as if we stop breathing", he writes. It is this interspace, which can hardly be nominated and yet, from which everything originates. These encounters present themselves in Schemmann's work in the most diverse ways. Sometimes they are green, black, brown - depending on how she remembers them. This makes each work a moment of pause and recognition of the encounter as the deepest and most honest form of dialogue.
Nadine Schemmann was born in 1977 and lives and works in Berlin. Having started as an illustrator, Schemmann has found her own artistic practice, which is constantly evolving. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group shows at Schlossgut Schwante, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Studio Berlin, BittelvonJenisch Hamburg and Haverkampf Leistenschneider Berlin, among others. This is her first solo exhibition in Switzerland.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
‘No Universe Among Us’ is on view at Gallery Ann Mazotti in Basel through June 26, 2023.
Gallery Ann Mazzotti
Horburgstr. 80
CH-4057 Basel
Image Credits:
Installation View ‘No Universe Among Us’ by Nadine Schemmann. Courtesy of Nadine Schemmann.