Studio Visit: Elisabeth Sonneck

 

 

On a hot August day in Berlin, artist Elisabeth Sonneck welcomed me at her bright and spacious studio on a peaceful street in the Mitte district. I noticed the colorful array of paint drips on the floorboards and the assortment of curious objects seemingly foraged from the urban surroundings, and quickly recognized a group of tall cylindrical rolls of paper distinctively standing upright on their ends. 

 

That these large paintings on paper are rolled and standing up is not simply a storage practicality but is a fundamental element of the sculptural concept that Sonneck has been working with since 2006. This cylindrical form is one of the many shapes her signature ‘Scrollpaintings’ can take; she may install them rolled up, unfurled against a wall, or suspended and spiraling downward to the floor. In every instance, gravity, the tension of the paper, and the characteristics of the exhibition space play an active role, and, in every instance, the final form is never fixed. 

 

 

 

 

By contrast, Sonneck’s brushwork is very contained, controlled, and repetitive. She always uses the same width brush and each long and steady brushstroke is no longer than she can achieve with her arm span. As a deliberate “counterweight” to the unbound possibilities of color, Sonneck explained, she consciously reduced her instruments and her method. Her technique works to quieten the painterly gesture, to allow the nuances of color to be perceived.

 

Sonneck has always worked with semi-transparent layers of paint, allowing colors to interact and change. It in 2007 that she, by accident, developed the technique of stopping her brush just short of the paper edge, which is now a distinctive characteristic of her work. She discovered that by staggering her brush stops after each layer, she creates a visual biography of the colors, allowing viewers to observe the individual layers of color as well as the new color variations that emerge through her process. 

 

 

 

Unrolled on the floor, the paper of Sonneck’s Scrollpainting behaves naturally – curled up at the ends, exposing paint drips that continue over onto the reverse side of the paper. The drips, Sonneck noted, help point to the fact that these works are not just paint on paper. Even lying flat, the painting is a three-dimensional object.

 

Sonneck also showed me new works from her ‘Clipage (Variable)’ series, which will be a component of the site-specific installation at Ronewa Art Projects. For this series, Sonneck arranges smaller paintings on paper into hanging assemblages. The same principles as her Scrollpaintings apply: forms are flexible and unfixed and minimalist painterly gestures allow the complexity of color to shine. Here, however, Sonneck adds a new element by combining the paintings with photocopies of the originals that she makes at a local copy shop. This brings up interesting – and perhaps unanswerable – questions about reproduction and value in art. Sonneck is interested in such contradictions, also incorporating found objects in her installations (hence the items of urban debris spread around her studio). 

 

 

 

As Sonneck has titled her upcoming exhibition with the musical terms Staccato and Glissando, I asked about her connection to music. Her paintings are often described as having rhythmic quality. Music is a source of inspiration, she told me, but not in the direct sense of representing a piece of music. Rather, she’s inspired by how music is made, how instruments and notes react to each other in the present. Sonneck’s art is “not about form. Yes, there is a form – but it's more about movement. Rhythm comes before a form is crystallized.” Rhythm happens in the moment.