You can’t count on the uncertain. It cannot be predicted – it happens when it happens. Decisions, however, have to be made. As with Christiane Schlosser’s drawings. For example, when fine horizontal red lines drawn freehand run across a large sheet of paper and then suddenly end in a short cheeky vertical countermovement. Sometimes a line turns round, other times it sags downwards or heads off in a direction of its own. As if this were simply a matter of fact, involuntary, never dramatic. Nevertheless, a decision has been made and a gap arises. Then a new start is made, the next line begins. Until line after line, track after track has been arranged in rows and the entire sheet is covered. Until a rhythm has formed, time and process have become visible such that we can experience them.
In terms of shapes and colors, Christiane Schlosser pares her images to the essentials, and the result is liberated spaces, spaces for contemplation in which we viewers can immerse ourselves. To experience something. For Schlosser, a sheet may often measure as much as 100 by 150 centimeters and constitutes territory that she sets out to measure by drawing, by wandering round it, exploring it, conducting a quite unique kind of field research. In order to find a point of orientation, to leaves traces or fathom them. In order to abandon herself to those traces and their points of overlap, and to convince herself they are there as certainties. And in order to sharpen her awareness of the differences that arise, that ebb and flow, that the viewer notices only to lose sight of them again. Differences that can be easily overlooked, but that are nevertheless there. Differences that count. For example when she creates a dense sequence of blue lines, always running from the upper left to the lower right across the sheet, between which white rectangles pop up like so many reminiscences of the grounding that forms the basis for everything and at the same time disappears in this ocean of blue.
The further something is away, the greater the distance becomes, says Christiane Schlosser, and the more the object dissolves in our perception of it and becomes a dot. So she places dots on paper, one after the other, always the same distance apart. First in bright orange, then in magenta. One dot overlapping with another, space arises, points of intersection arise – a grid in which the dots start to dance. There is an unmistakable joy in how they scuttle across the sheet.
Tranquility, artist and composer John Cage once said, signifies liberation from inclinations and disinclinations. Rhythm as a form of movement, cellist Pablo Casals once said, is a matter of delay. It requires repetition to undermine regularity and to change the course of something, philosopher Sören Kierkegaard noted. Tranquility, movement and repetition inform Christiane Schlosser’s drawings. Each develops from the one before and attests to a cautious but attentive attempt to establish some kind of order. If up, down, front, back, right and left all appear in her sheets, as equal as before and after, sooner or later, then this is because only in this way can something surprising happen – be it on a piece of paper or in life and in thought. You can’t count on the uncertain. But decisions simply have to be made.
Works by Christiane Schlosser
are on show at Galerie Kim Behm
Untermainkai 20
60329 Frankfurt/Main
Thru December 19
in the exhibition “Coffeetalk”
and from January 9 – February 20, 2016 in the show
“4 Zeichnungen. Lucie Beppler Barbara Hindahl, Dorothee Rocke, Christiane Schlosser”
and from February 4 – March 28, 2016
in the exhibition “Deltabeben”
at Kunsthalle Mannheim.
