Anna Reinert
29 Apr - 11 Jun 2006
ANNA REINERT
"Malarstwo"
No smudges stain the window panes, the floor looks freshly polished and there is not a speck of dust, even in the corners. The buildings, streets and interiors that Anna Reinert paints are void of any trace of use or wear and tear. Ideal facades, so flawless they could be film sets, so perfectly illuminated and so prototypical for our image of built urban space.
Then again, in the more recent works there are people moving around in these rooms. Painted in as much painstaking detail as the backdrops, the scenes in which Anna Reinert frames her protagonists are enchanting, simple, self-absorbed, almost incidental. The composition's austerity is broken by the ambiguity of the characters' behaviour. And in other respects, too, the perfect surfaces come apart, luring the gaze into the trap: upon getting closer and feeling one's way around the scenery, the spaces dissolve into surfaces, depths breaks up into graphic shapes, materials previously thought to be easily distinguishable become increasingly similar to each other, exchangeable in the play of the refracted light, of the translucence and shady darkness.
Anna Reinert's paintings focus on prototypical situations taken from contemporary reality. Moments of pausing for thought, or of passing through in a world that is clearly outlined only in appearance. The more casually one looks, the more tempting is the illusion – the closer one gets, the more apparent is its defragmentation.
© Anna Reinert
Exhibition View
170 x 140 cm
Acrylic on Canvas
2006
"Malarstwo"
No smudges stain the window panes, the floor looks freshly polished and there is not a speck of dust, even in the corners. The buildings, streets and interiors that Anna Reinert paints are void of any trace of use or wear and tear. Ideal facades, so flawless they could be film sets, so perfectly illuminated and so prototypical for our image of built urban space.
Then again, in the more recent works there are people moving around in these rooms. Painted in as much painstaking detail as the backdrops, the scenes in which Anna Reinert frames her protagonists are enchanting, simple, self-absorbed, almost incidental. The composition's austerity is broken by the ambiguity of the characters' behaviour. And in other respects, too, the perfect surfaces come apart, luring the gaze into the trap: upon getting closer and feeling one's way around the scenery, the spaces dissolve into surfaces, depths breaks up into graphic shapes, materials previously thought to be easily distinguishable become increasingly similar to each other, exchangeable in the play of the refracted light, of the translucence and shady darkness.
Anna Reinert's paintings focus on prototypical situations taken from contemporary reality. Moments of pausing for thought, or of passing through in a world that is clearly outlined only in appearance. The more casually one looks, the more tempting is the illusion – the closer one gets, the more apparent is its defragmentation.
© Anna Reinert
Exhibition View
170 x 140 cm
Acrylic on Canvas
2006