Natascha Schmitten Stll

Galerie Christian Lethert is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by painter Natascha Schmitten. The exhibition, titled Stll, which like her painting offers a variety of readings and approaches, includes new paintings as well as some works on paper.

Between shapes and volumes separated by hard edges or united by flowing transitions, abstraction hides a moment of reality. The artist captures these traces or visual abstractions of moments of our time with ink, acrylic and oil paint on nylon fabric. Natascha Schmitten skilfully explores the possibilities of the transparent fabric and, through the partial use of primers such as chalk ground, creates a contrasting coexistence of permeable and opaque surfaces. The latter she partially transforms in the further painting process by applying numerous increasingly dense color glazes, which no longer reveal any brushstrokes, into matte, reflective surfaces. Depending on the viewing angle, a glistening incidence of light occurs that causes the viewer to blink. Through the deliberate placement and omission, foreground and background seem to behave anew with every view, positive and negative spaces cannot be firmly adjusted, a dynamic shimmering and flowing as in a moving image emerges. This fluidity, created by painterly means alone, is inherent in all of the artist’s works, but the settings have become more decisive, giving the new works a great lightness.