Eletrohalle Rhomberg presents the second solo show of Linz-based artist Adelheid Rumetshofer (*1976) featuring all-new works on canvas in a wide range of colours, exploring the theme of light as a source of inspiration.
Many years ago, the Linz-based artist considered an unagitated view from the banks into the clear water of a calm lake to be the starting point for a new painterly exploration. Where the reflective surface also gave a transparent view through it and to the ground, near and far vision blurred. Adelheid Rumetshofer now understood the visually captured space in front of her as an accumulation and interference of various transparent, non-transparent, light-reflective and low- light levels.
These interlocked, determined and covered each other at the same time, so that a grasp of the space could be understood as a process of layering. In a similar way, layer upon layer, the artist carefully applies her oil paints to a dark primed canvas. This is followed by the most subtle color gradations and continuous overlapping, which in their entirety create concentrated paintings. Despite their minimalist stylization and visual quietness, they never stand still.
The rusty, taupe, earthy brown and pink tones of the works are accompanied by further paintings of various variations in blue. Different mixing ratios and underpaintings convey individual color spectra, which are layered like veils and appear from within. The reduced and delicate play of color coatings is a result of Rumetshofer’s interest in the formal criteria and conditions of the painterly process.
In the exhibition, the artist gets to the bottom of painting as painting and explicitly understands the complex process of paint over paint on canvas as the determining means of a painterly illusion of depth. The centers of light or darkness emerging from the imagined realm of the surface thus initiate the delimitation towards the surroundings. The viewer’s gaze is lost and immersed in the artist’s color field variations, as are possible cycles of abstraction. The works don’t denote specific or abstracted objects, but process a general spatial and formal formation.
Color serves Rumetshofer as a formal and contextual carrier of significance without ever explicitly constituting meaning. Instead, her works generally denote the illusory principle of painting: the image is one that appears as a surface, is conceived as a surface through its design and yet is capable of imagining the three-dimensional. This surface emancipates itself and, depending on the application of paint, becomes a dreamlike hint of space through painted clusters. Through this technique, Rumetshofer creates subtle expressions of spatiality, which, in numerous nuances, transformations and twists, aim for a purely non- objective view and allow their connotations to emerge solely by association.
Without attempting a specific reference to perceivable reality or the desire for personal, emotional expression, Adelheid Rumetshofer captures the pictorial quality of her paintings through her sensitive use of color. Without a mimetic reference and without reference to external meanings, she is only interested in what lies in the intuitive observation of the viewer. The works thus unfold their expression above all in the poetic aspiration to create closeness, detachment and intimacy – almost hypnotically – through diffusions and superimpositions.
© Text and Photo courtesy of Elektrohalle Rhomberg
