Artist interview

  • Saša Pančić. Photo credit: Nebojša Babić.
    Saša Pančić. Photo credit: Nebojša Babić.

    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." 

     

    Roger Washington: The title of your exhibition, "Membranes," explores the metaphor of membranes as selective barriers that protect and define physically and symbolically. Could you elaborate on how this concept translates into your art and how it challenges viewers to consider hidden layers of reality? 
     
    Saša Pančić: The exhibition's title, "Membranes," has symbolic meaning derived from the artwork's language - its flatness and imaginary depth. I have always been fascinated by the creation of the physical world; why do certain forms in nature have this specific look? On the other hand, for me, a painted picture (or drawing) is beyond the concept of representation; it has the essence of a particular language and is the perception of different dimensions and interactions between external and internal, physical and psychological, historical and super-historical.
     

     

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Profile pic: Clara Berta
    Profile pic: Clara Berta

    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.

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Antonietta Grassi in her studio in Montreal
    Antonietta Grassi in her studio in Montreal

    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.

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Artist Canal Cheong Jagerroos in her studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.
    Artist Canal Cheong Jagerroos in her studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.

    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. 

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Elisabeth Sonneck installing a scrollpainting. Photo: Yang Rui
    Elisabeth Sonneck installing a scrollpainting. Photo: Yang Rui

    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.

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Artist Rico Lascano, interview for online exhibition with Ronewa Art Projects
    Rico Lascano in his studio. Photo by Nap Jamir.

    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.

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Season: Fictional Plant 26, 2020, Pencil and watercolor on assorted paper, 29.7 x 21 cm, Signed and dated (Unframed).
    Season: Fictional Plant 26, 2020, Pencil and watercolor on assorted paper, 29.7 x 21 cm, Signed and dated (Unframed).

    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

  • April Dell by April Dell
    Artist Tashi Brauen, upcoming online exhibition with Ronewa Art projects
    Tashi Brauen, photo by Claude Gasser

    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.

  • Artist: Tashi Brauen
    Artist: Tashi Brauen

    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.

     


     

  • Artist: Patricia Sandonis
    Artist: Patricia Sandonis

    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.

     


     

  • Elisabeth Sonneck, Scrollpainting5 rotation orange, 2015, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany, with a painting by Heinrich Campendonk, Oil on paper ea. 110 x 500 cm. Photo: Hubert Kemper
    Elisabeth Sonneck, Scrollpainting5 rotation orange, 2015, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany, with a painting by Heinrich Campendonk, Oil on paper ea. 110 x 500 cm. Photo: Hubert Kemper

    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.

     


     

  • Photo credits: Annelies Strba — Location: Arcegnio, Monte Verita, Ticino, Switzerland
    Photo credits: Annelies Strba — Location: Arcegnio, Monte Verita, Ticino, Switzerland

    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.

     

     

     

     

  • Image: Tashi Brauen Photo credits: Jeremy Knowles (Courtesy: Ronewa Art Projects)
    Image: Tashi Brauen Photo credits: Jeremy Knowles (Courtesy: Ronewa Art Projects)

    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.