10.26 — 12.06.14
Monika Bartholomé
Night Walk
October 26 – December 6, 2014
Since the 1970s Monika Bartholomé’s work–primarily graphite and water-based mediums on paper–has been characterized by its overlaid brushwork traces made with subtle variations of tone and dense networks of lines. The layering creates an evocative optical and psychological space. As the light recedes into the drawings, a greater emphasis is placed on an ethereal, ever-present luminosity. It’s within this light that Bartholomé finds the poetic and the spiritual. For her, Rembrandt van Rijn’s etchings hold a particular a fascination. In his prints, the light glowing mysteriously through the dense cross hatched lines reveal the white of the paper to suggest openings and cracks in the darkness. The etched lines are dense to the point of darkness, but never absolutely so. The work in Nightwalk represents her deep connection to light in all of its manifestations.
Her subjects include interiors, links between inside and outside and the objects, models and places with which she’s formed close associations. An earlier project of Bartholomé’s “processed” works produced by Edward Hopper; those images addressed the complexities of seeing and being seen. She’s interested in how we look at things; how we identify the familiar, discover meaning and use our own memories to connect with art works. When we look at images, we search for cues, find personal references and make connections. Her work reveals how experiencing an art work is a process of analogizing and discovery.
To thoroughly scrutinize the subjective processes of perception and to view that experience with humor and from a little distance, are essential aspects of her work. Since 2010, these qualities have also been recorded in film clips like Zeichnen (Drawing). In the film clips, it is the drawing process itself that comes forward most assertively. The camera is on hand only to witness and record what already exists. In Night Walk, a film from 2014, the lens meanders through a drawing that was completed in 2004 establishing a new narrative arc.
Monika Bartholomé studied at the Kunstacadamie in Düsseldorf and currently lives in Cologne, Germany. For the past several decades, she’s accumulated an extensive exhibition record including projects in Germany at the Franz Hitze Haus in Münster; the Museum Kunstpalast and Galerie Ute Parduhn in Düsseldorf; Museum Kolumba in Cologne; the Kunsthalle Bremen; galerie oqbo in Berlin and at St Virgil in Salzburg, Austria among many others. She’s showed at devening projects + editions twice before including Second Sight, her first solo show with the gallery. Monika Bartholome is in numerous public collections including Deutsche Bank, Kunsthalle Bremen, Museum Kolumba and the Japanese Cultural Institute, BW-Bank Stuttgart and Artohek in Cologne and Bonn, Germany.
