Interview

Ronewa gallery manager April Dell visited the Berlin studio of artist Elisabeth Sonneck to chat about her practice and get a sneak peek at the new works Sonneck has in store for her upcoming solo exhibition. Staccato Glissando opens on Friday, September 13, during the 2024 Berlin Art Week.

From June 20th to July 25th, 2024, New Zealand artis  Michael Dell will be showing a new series of mesmerizing abstract paintings and drawings at Ronewa Art Projects in the exhibition Distant Pictures. We chatted with Dell about the cinematic inspiration for this series, his process-led approach to art-making, and the fine details contained in the remnants of this process.

Introducing South African multidisciplinary artist Pierre le Riche, whose recent body of textile art goes on show at our Berlin gallery on February 15, 2024. 

Much of le Riche’s work has been aimed at confronting themes of colonialism, race, and privilege, as well as challenging norms and associations around gender and sexuality. We chat with the artist about these themes and his process and materials in creating the vivid wall tapestries presented in the exhibition In Four Places at Once.  

I recently talked with Serbian-based artist Saša Pančić about his  exhibition at Ronewa Art Projects in Berlin entitled "Membranes." The exhibition  runs until December 21, 2023, and features three distinct series of ink drawings: "Semantic Shadows," "Liminality," and "Beyond the Horizon." 

Ronewa Art Projects presents a solo show of new paintings by artist Tashi Brauen. Cover the Blank Spots opens on the evening of Friday, April 28th, alongside numerous exhibitions in the Postdamer Straße art district opening during the city-wide Berlin Gallery Weekend.

Marinda Vandenheede’s new series Oxygen continues her use of curious found objects combined with her own geometric formal language. For this series, she repurposes cardboard punched card patterns used in industrial loom weaving, overlaying them with hand-painted geometric designs guided by a minimalist logic of repetition and symmetry.

Vandenheede's Oxygen series will be featured in the Ronewa online viewing room from June 1 to July 1, 2022. We chatted to Vandenheede about balancing abstract compositions with found objects, and the histories and complexities inherent within the materials themselves. 

Read the exhibition press release here.

Ahead of her solo online exhibition, Ronewa chatted to Hungarian-American artist Clara Berta about her new series of works ‘Blue Confgurations.’ Berta shares insight into her creative process that brings together intuition, movement,  and inspirations from nature that give her gestural forms an organic quality.

The online exhibition ‘Blue Configurations (Paper) Series’ is live in the Ronewa viewing room from February 14 to March 14, 2022. Read the exhibition press release here.

Canadian artist Antonietta Grassi employs a language of geometric abstraction to paint enigmatic forms that spark associations. Through her intuitive painting process of layering flat shapes and lines, she creates distorted three-dimensional objects influenced by memories and her environment.

Ronewa Art Projects talked to Grassi about the objects, spaces and histories that influence her forms and concepts. The online exhibiton 'Off Line,' featuring Grassi's recent works on paper, linen and canvas is live in the Ronewa viewing room from August 4 to September 4, 2021. 

Read the exhibiton press release here.

Chinese-Finnish artist Canal Cheong Jagerroos creates richly layered mixed-media canvases and immersive installations that combine traditional Chinese art techniques and materials with a distinctive visual language of symbols, textures, color, and abstraction. Her multidimensional, enigmatic compositions communicate both the artist’s inner world and an open invitation to find meaning. 

We talked to Cheong Jagerroos about her creative process of deconstruction, how the places she lives influences her practice, and the inspirations behind her new series of works on show in the upcoming online exhibition, opening in the Ronewa viewing room on June 16, 2021. 

We chatted to Swiss-Tibetan artist Tashi Brauen ahead of his exhibition at SAC Gallery, Bangkok, and online exhibition in the Ronewa online viewing room, opening on April 8, 2021.

Brauen discusses the origins and different processes of the two series of works on show, which both employ unique mark-marking methods that balance intention and coincidence. 

Marinda Vandenheede repurposes found objects marked by use and time to create quietly enchanting sculptural objects and paper works that spark curiosity and wonder. Her exhibition ‘Re:Generations’ opens in the Ronewa online viewing room on March 3, 2021. 

Vandenheede juxtaposes unique signs of a past life and the natural degradation of materials with geometric forms and surprising compositions. Her playful works nod to the inherent dualities found within humanity and nature, and invite viewers to see the beauty in decay.

We talked to Vandenheede about her relationship to her chosen materials and objects, the conceptual balance she strikes in her compositions, and the moment of stillness she offers her viewers.

The upcoming online exhibition ‘Ritardando - In Color’ by Berlin-based artist Elisabeth Sonneck features works that continue her exploration into the physical relations of form and color in space. 

Ritardando is a musical term meaning a gradual decrease in speed. This sense of slowing down describes Sonneck’s rhythmic repetition of broad and steady brushstrokes that allow nuances of color variations and interactions to play out on paper and canvas surfaces. These surfaces are gently manipulated into dynamic shapes that form a dialogue between the intrinsic properties of her everyday materials and situational elements of space, light, environment, and audience. Read the press release here.

We talked to Sonneck about her process, her love of paper, and the spatial relationships that make each installation of her works unique.

Rico Lascano's upcoming exhibition in the Ronewa Online Viewing Room opens on September 3rd. We talked to him about his meditative art practice, nature and spirituality, and making art during lockdown.

Lascano's abstract practice draws from the breathtaking nature in the Philippines, the spiritual traditions of his home country, and his own quest for serenity and peace in a busy world. Within his floating compositions and delicately textured expanses, Lascano creates boundless spaces of stillness and timelessness. He invites viewers to occupy the transcendantal space of his inner journey.

With one week to go before Mireille Gros' online exhibition opens, I had the pleasure of chatting to the Swiss artist about her ongoing botanical drawing project. Gros shared insights on her relationship with nature, her artistic process, and her new series created for the Ronewa Online Viewing Room. 

Opening to the public on June 19th, 2020, is Ronewa Art Projects’ first online exhibition—the beginning of a new era of online art. Swiss artist Tashi Brauen presents a new series of works born out of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. We talk to Brauen about his new works and the online art world.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Exhibition:

26 October 2019 - 12 December 2019 

Tashi Brauen’s objects and pictures aren’t meant for all eternity. Back in the studio from an exhibition, cardboard might get a second coat of paint. Then the previous shade might announce itself on the surface in soft shadows, or mix itself with the temperature of the new layer of acrylic. Tashi Brauen delights in materials and enjoys a nearly intimate relationship with paper. He tests its narrative potential by treating it with paint or damaging it just slightly. A crease, split or tear draws light, irregular veins into the red or blue ground. Cardboard jumps off the wall three times, forms half drums and, with cracked edges, evokes a notion of columns, lanterns, lampshades. And that’s where it happens: painting flirting with design and delivering a commentary on the environment and architecture. A piece of paper glued to the surface becomes a threshold, its micro-edge casts a dark, narrow shadow onto a monochrome surface. Doesn’t a landscape have its beginnings in such a minimal gradation?

The works of Swiss artist Tashi Brauen are created amid genres.

Between image and sculpture, surface and volume, as well as between different media of artistic expression, Brauen creates expansive installations, picturesque-looking photographs and relief-like wall objects that playfully trace the phenomenon of the surface.

Through his material manipulation, Tashi Brauen opens up a new and unusual view of traditional materials and focuses on their physical properties.

The works of Berlin based Spanish artist Patricia Sandonis possess a strong political character.

The partly participatory installations, objects, and drawings translate social phenomena into artistic processes. For example, Sandonis deals with the creation and consolidation of collective memory. For this, she has dealt with the conservation of European monuments, and has developed her own artistic language of remembrance.

The Berlin-based artist Elisabeth Sonneck uses painterly means to create exciting color spaces. However, these do not constitute a self-contained illusionistic image, but are directly related to their environment.

In temporary site-specific installations as well as in autonomous pictorial objects, Elisabeth Sonneck's painting emanates from surface and wall, becomes vivid and conquers real space. With minimalist lightness, her works expand artistic boundaries.

An Interview with Mireille Gros by Marie-Laure Bernadac - 2001

Marie-Laure Bernadac: this color book carries the name of the exhibition “émergence“. It contains many different drawings that were compiled and pasted in its pages.

Mireille Gros: I use them to prepare the exhibition, to develop my vocabulary of forms.

MLB: some of the motifs are quite different from the plant and vegetable motifs so characteristic of your work. The compositions, too, are different. There are fewer single subjects, the pages are fuller, some even entirely covered with tiny cells.

MG: A reduction took place. When you look through a microscope or a telescope you often see a similar picture. I don’t differentiate between abstract and figurative drawing. By changing my position and thereby my perspective, I’m freer. Near meets far.

Tashi Brauen is a Swiss-Tibetan photographer, painter, and sculptor based in Zurich, Switzerland. His work combines the fragility of paper, spontaneous folding and manipulating surfaces with bold color and texture to reveal the artist's affection for geometric forms, shifting perspectives on dimension and exploring the interplay of scale, impact and details.

Meeting Tashi for the first time at his exhibition in Bern at the Museum of Fine Arts, our easy conversation led the way to a recent visit at his studio in central Zurich. There, we discussed his upcoming exhibition in Berlin at Ronewa Art Projects, his work and process as well as sharing a personal glimpse of his life as an artist.