Exhibitionsimpressions and Exhibition announcements 2024

“Tracing Lines": The title of the exhibition already addresses key aspects that occurred to me when I was looking at Anja Mamero's work. At its core is the ambiguity that the title carries. On the one hand, I mean an active part; the part in which the action lies with the individual subject, the people who look at the pictures: those who follow the lines with their gaze. On the other hand, there is the more passive aspect, which in turn emanates from the paintings and the lines: pursuing lines.

The line, or the stroke, is the first way in which a painted or drawn representation finds its way onto the paper, canvas or other surface. A reference to art historical theory came to mind here. The focus here is on the line as a trace captured in the drawing. The classic image of the artist, which is probably still widespread among the general public, still suggests the presence of the sketchpad. The sketch and drawing serve as the first level on which the artist's idea manifests itself, is visually captured and finds its form. This topos can be traced back not least to the great art theorist of the Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari. By this I mean the theoretical treatises of the so-called Disegno theories of the 15th and 16th centuries, in which drawing was discussed as the origin and “father” of all the arts. These not only served to detach the arts from the realm of craftsmanship, but also, as is well known, stemmed from a time in which a painting was still understood as a window to the world, such as in the work of Leon Battista Alberti, i.e. a conception of art that brought the artist close to genius and emphasized the genius of his artistic approach. Drawing and line served as the basis for this. And some of this idea has certainly been carried forward to the present day.

When thinking about the line, one quickly comes to its distinction from the stroke. In Anja Mamero's work, the line is also defined by its accurate execution, whereas the stroke - usually drawn quickly - emphasizes the gestural and physical. You should definitely keep these small differences in mind when looking at Anja Mamero's works.

The oldest work here in the exhibition is from 2020, a work that was part of Anja Mamero's Master's degree at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design. The title of the work “between the lines” already picks up on two essential elements that help to approach the interior of Anja Mamero's works: The line and the surface, or the space between the lines. Her understanding and her thoughts on the line are central. She sees the line as the plane on which the artist inscribes herself into the artwork, as the interface between the material and the artist-subject. Anja Mamero herself formulated it as follows in the written part of her Master's thesis:

“In this phase of creating the line, it is important that the guided and intuitively set line is always a part of the artist himself. The artist is also open to new things.”

The setting and application of the line is therefore the moment in which the communication between artist and artwork is formed and manifested. Every attempt to set the line accurately and in the same way must fail and comes to the conclusion that each line, despite its serial appearance in the painting, represents a trace of its own, captured in oil on canvas. Through their presence, the lines direct our gaze and our attention to the surface and the pictorial space between them.

A second group of works in the exhibition also plays with the relationship between pictorial space, pictorial surface and depth of perspective. The grid is elementary here. If I referred at the beginning to the art-historical tradition of the line, something similar applies to the grid. Leon Battista Alberti, who saw the painting as a window to the world, was only able to do this by using the grid - no longer visible in the final painting - as an underlying auxiliary construction to enable perspective depictions. Centuries later, in the wake of classical modernism, the grid itself became a pictorial object and the basis of theoretical reflection in 20th century art history and art theory. The grid was repeatedly used to explore the relationship between realistic and abstract painting and to thematize their relationship to the flat picture surface. The American theorist Rosalind Krauss expressed it as follows in 1978:

“Unlike perspective, the grid does not depict the spatiality of a room or a landscape or a group of figures on the surface of a painting. If it depicts anything at all, it depicts the surface of the painting itself.”

In keeping with this tradition, Anja Mamero also uses the grid as an independent pictorial object in some of the works in this exhibition. All three pictures, in which the grid was applied with oil on canvas, are linked by the fact that the grid is not identical with the pictorial space. It seems to negate or explode the boundaries of the respective picture. The respective edges of the picture are thus drawn into the foreground of the view and the process of creating the grid becomes comprehensible to the viewer in retrospect. Just as each line has its own individual character, the respective grid takes up the attempt to create an optical illusion of depth without negating the fact that all the works are painted picture surfaces. A constant oscillation between picture surface and translucent background.

The element of translucency or the interplay of foreground and background is an elementary component of another group:

“behind the curtain”. Every curtain is made to cover or conceal something. At the same time, in its original function it refers to something that is behind it, that something is hidden. This something behind often shines through or merely appears in our individual and subjective imagination.

Lines are also applied in oil on canvas in these paintings. They are colorful traces that dominate the picture surface, determine perception and only at second glance reveal that there is something behind the lines - be it figurative representations that shine through ephemerally in the form of the drawing or the rough and coarse strokes that form the word truth. An exclamation made with rough strokes that combines with the precisely applied lines, forming a symbiosis on the material surface of the picture. Line or stroke, which conveys the truth?

In the most recent works in this exhibition, Anja Mamero overlays paintings with filmic projections, thus enabling us to experience a further dimension of theoretical reflection on the medium of painting. The painting - especially oil on canvas - is certainly the genre that corresponds to the idea of a work of art in the most classical sense. The underlying idea of uniqueness is important here. “tracing lines” and the accompanying sketches entitled ‘shadow lines’ arose from the desire to capture rays of light and shadows. In the paintings themselves, the colors, their transparency and translucency serve as a means of representation. In “tracing line one” and “tracing line two”, these are overlaid with film projections based on the same structures. The painted and filmed images are superimposed here. The picture surface itself seems to be set in motion and expands into the surrounding space. The puzzling and shifting of the different pictorial levels no longer takes place solely through the artist's direct application of oil paint, but is expanded to include a mechanical aspect of image production and reproduction.Another dimension is added and the lines - brought to life - seem to want to pursue and capture themselves. A constant comparison of the unique piece with its apparent reproduction in the film. Between your gaze as the viewer and the painting itself comes the cinematic view of the underlying structures. And this brings us to a level of media theory that deals with which form of representation appears more genuine, more authentic and more real: the painted or the filmic image?

At its core, film is similar to photography. In its technical apparatus and painting with rays of light. The word “photography” has its origins in ancient Greek and literally means “to write, paint or draw with light”. If one considers the cinematic image as the moving photographic image, it can be no coincidence that Anja Mamero overlays the painted representation of light with images that have drawn themselves with light. The lines, the space between the lines, the translucency and iridescence of the foregrounds and backgrounds are brought together here and extended into the technical and theoretical pictorial space. The static lines captured on the canvas begin to come to life and are transferred into real space.

These are some of my thoughts on the works by Anja Mamero presented here. What is all the more beautiful and adds to the complexity is the fact that you can look at these works beyond art historical and media theoretical thoughts and simply follow and enjoy the lines, strokes and traces with your own individual and subjective gaze. A visual pleasure that is at the heart of viewing pictures.