Artist Statement

“I am interested in moving images. In my works fragments combine to one, objects fade into each other, light directs the viewer’s eye, shadows recall physicality and transparencies orchestrate spatial depth.”

My works explore temporalities and spatial position in relation to the body, an environment and the dialectics of visual space and perception. In my most recent drawings, I compose impressions through several layers of drawings on top of one another depicting multiple traces of movement, angles and shapes of the same object. The immediacy of building up or wiping out stages of the composition are captured in pastels or charcoal, and modifications are often made by hand directly on the paper. In the process of materializing temporal observations of ongoing changes in nature, recognizable shapes and colors gradually dissolve into non-objective impressions of associated matter. The resulting compositions are accumulated actions of adding, removing and blending tonal values of color, light and shadows which evoke interpretations of places, sounds and memories without direct statements as well as disclose the parallels that exist beyond the visible world. The suggestive possibilities of these compositions also hint to the elusive nature of images, their omnipresence in life across history as well as their powerful ability to imply meanings, ideas, emotions or narratives beyond what is explicitly depicted.

My research on visual material and narratives of desire, truth, beauty, spirituality, growth and decay examines the personal, cultural and popular media constructs which influence the viewer’s thoughts and create lasting notions on the mind. Besides drawings I use collage as a conceptual approach in my process of deconstructing and reinterpreting historical and popular images as associated matter. In a series of collages of floral imagery, I was interested in repurposing the media material from fashion magazines and explore the codes of beauty, desire, commodities and the gaze. Through the process of deconstructing the magazine pages of female figures, fabrics, cosmetics and patterns and assembling the fragments of all kinds of found shapes, tones and colors to new images of floral arrangements the works comment on self-reflection, creation, transformation, the cycle of life as well as the symbolism, status, trade, politics and cultural wealth depicted in flower paintings and conserved in art history throughout centuries.

The transition from drawing and collage into paintings or site-specific installations is important to me while I explore ideas in larger scale and in terms of the architecture of an actual space or an urban structure. The duality of subject and object is referenced in these larger works by bringing in my own physical body as a tool to measure, walk through or position myself in a space while visually mapping the movement of the body, depth of viewpoints and constant shifts of material color on the canvas or on-site. My paintings often allude to mere color fields and abstractions of structures, fragments of billboards, windowed and reflecting surfaces known for the city’s urban landscape. They are impressions of juxtaposed internalized images from a walk or an event, self-referential structural organizations of dynamic visual elements referencing the body and ambiguous depictions of associated matter investigating the passing of time, visual perception of imagined locations and a longing for the suspension of disbelief.
Miriam Nöske