Elisabeth Sonneck German, b. 1962

Elisabeth Sonneck’s painting and installation practice spans infinite forms, united by her rigorous commitment to the inherent potential of her materials and their relation to their environment. Her work is a dialogue between her everyday materials and situational elements of space, light, and audience.

Sonneck’s paper installations are a subtle manipulation of the material, guiding it into new and unique forms while allowing its weight, texture, and material tension to behave in organic ways. Far from passive, these works are in a state of static dynamism. Upon her paper and canvas surfaces, Sonneck conducts complex coloristic experiments that underscore the concept of color as an unstable state. Nuanced color relations play out in a rhythmic repetition created by Sonneck’s consciously reduced painterly gestures.

Elisabeth Sonneck was born in Bünde, Germany, and lives and works in Berlin. Her work has been widely shown in museums, art institutions, galleries, artist-run spaces, and public spaces, and is included in private and public collections worldwide. She has held solo shows at IWE Art Museum (Kunming, CN), Fremdenhaus Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie (Dessau, DE), Kunstmuseum Ahlen (DE), Museum Gegenstandsfreier Kunst (Otterndorf, DE). Notable group shows include Prague City Gallery (CZ), Künstlerhaus Dortmund (DE), Stiftung für Konzeptuelle Kunst (Soest, DE), Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen (DE), Kunstmuseum Bremerhaven (DE), Austrian Museum of Papermaking Steyrermühl (AT), Boris Yeltsin Centre (Yekaterinburg, RU), New Bedford Art Museum (US), Georg Kolbe Museum (Berlin, DE), Guardini-Galerie (Berlin, DE), Vasarely Museum (Budapest, HU), Mies v.d. Rohe Haus, (Berlin, DE), Staatliches Museum Schwerin (DE), NGBK (Berlin, DE), and Sanssouci Castle (Potsdam, DE).