The gallery is pleased to present the new solo show by the German painter Clara Brörmann, Turning Point Paintings.

Brörmann is very aware, when working on this series of paintings, of the current situation we’re all living in and the fact that it’s the turn of a decade which somehow implies a break from the past. 

Her works are also meant to be an invitation to the viewer to change his/her perspective; to rethink, to turn our own views upside down. 

The show features two most recent series of canvases, Turning Point Paintings and Prisma Paintings: in these works Brörmann, true to her practice, plays with multi-layered paint, colours and shapes, in a process of both construction and deconstruction of geometric and graphic forms, while offering a deeper reflection on painting.

In her work, Brörmann has always been moved by painting’s ability to embody the artist’s physical and mental energy and communicate it to the viewer. 

With the Turning Point Paintings, she’s reaching out to expand these characteristics: tapering the physical presence within the paintings by using color and form in correspondence to human anatomy, to our senses and our physicality. 

Brörmann pursues a vision of an anthropomorphic geometry: she started to move in this direction with the series Kopfbilder, yet the Turning Point Paintings mark the beginning of a new perspective in the artist’s practice, she is trying to communicate her artistic concern of corporeality through pushing the medium’s characteristics, rather than giving the canvas a figure-like form. 

As the artist says, ‘I believe that seeing is a process which is connected to the whole body. And so seeing a painting is bound to the medium’s materiality, dimensions, and form - it is bound to opposing it in its full physical presence. In this sense, it will never be replaceable by virtual images and will stay an essential part of human culture’.

As a counterpart to the large format Turning Point Paintings, Brörmann presents the Prisma Paintings series. Whereas the first depict one symmetric mirror axis, the Prisma Paintings are animated by several reflections within the different layers.

Prisms are geometrical forms with parallel sides. With a glass prism you can refract light into all colours of the rainbow. You can also look through the diagonal surfaces and see the world as compound mirrored cuttings.

Once again Brörmann invites the viewer to take a different point of view into consideration: reflections show alternative perspectives, multiple reflections allow a number of different angles at the same time.

‘I am thinking of a well- known motif: standing in an elevator, fitted all over with mirrors, I see my face. It is repeated myriads of times. What is really interesting about this - my self is transcended through this infinite mirroring. There is a comparable process with a kaleidoscope: through its glass I cannot only see single pieces in movement, but a pattern multiplying from its centre. The realization of a single form turns into an ongoing colourful motion’.

While looking into the kaleidoscope or through a prism you see not only the reflection or repetition of a form, but also the multiplication of a specific symmetrical order. The rhythmic multiplication connect the individual parts into one pattern, a dynamic symmetry.