Barbara Weiss

Berta Fischer

02 Mar - 19 Apr 2013

© Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Photo: Bernd Borchardt
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Photo: Bernd Borchardt
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Photo: Bernd Borchardt
BERTA FISCHER
2 March – 19 April 2013

Galerie Barbara Weiss is very pleased to present the first solo exhibition by berlin-based artist Berta Fischer with a series of new voluminous sculptures.
Berta Fischer redefines the gallery space with her works. A maze of colourful acrylic sculptures take over the gallery space leaving the visitor in marvel. The works do not simply enter a dialogue with the architectural space, but through their presence they take ownership of it: at the entrance a spiderlike creature welcomes and gives way to a red and green interwoven column reaching from floor to ceiling; from the wall on the right a thick blue boulder-like form emerges resembling an ulcer or even a berry.
A blue and red metallic-coloured, oscillating curtain separates the exhibition space while leaving (through its transparency) a view onto a neon green rosette mounted on the back wall. Its gaze resembles the furtive look of a lurking animal that hides behind the curtains. This leaves only the gallery front desk that is now enclosed by a tenuous green-orange wall.
The interplay between the sovereignty with which her sculptures define the space and the constant sense of fragility and tension that accompany them, is characteristic to the artist's practice. For over ten years, she has been working with different synthetic materials and has pushed these to the limit of their stability. Comparisons could be drawn to artists such as Georges Vantongerloo or even Moholy-Nagy, but most importantly her works are immersed in the differing ways in which a dialogue between natural and artificial forms could be held.
In her most recent works that are characterised by their monumentality as well as their simplicity, Berta Fischer shows once more her ability to change rigid materials into an organic form-vocabulary. Her walls, which initially began with holes and oval patterns, have now developed into long, slotted and dynamic objects. The PV-foam (Polyurethane) is a new material, which has gained through its bulging components sensibility and softness. Further, a long plasticine sculpture that emerges like long fingers out of the wall, gives way to possible directions that the artist might of move on to.

Kirsten Wandschneider
 

Tags: Berta Fischer, Georges Vantongerloo