Sabine Moritz — Deeply unaware — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 11 → October 23, 2019

Marian Goodman Gallery Paris presents a new exhibition of works by Sabine Moritz. The artist premiere a body of large abstract paintings from 2019. The works on canvas are remarkable for their complex compositions, intense brushstrokes, and vivid colors. Moritz’s new paintings immerse the viewer in an experience of intimacy and meditation.

Abstraction first appeared in Moritz’s work in 2015, until then she had been known for her figurative paintings. This new departure allowed her to develop a profoundly unique practice. Sabine Moritz works with a freedom of expression limited only by the principle: to look and correct until the work has « the density and intensity that captivates.”¹

“The identity of Sabine Moritz’s abstract paintings has to do with the way she works, which can be described as an integrally empirical or optical method. It contributes essentially to the exemplarity of this strand of work. The paintings are produced without sketches or preparatory drawings. The series does not result from a concept. The idea for the painting is developed from several colored lines applied to canvases in the studio as a field of open possibilities.”²

The new abstract works presented at the gallery are each based on a rich dialogue of color. « Every picture of the series uses all of the primary colors with different weighting. They overlap across the whole picture plane in short or longer amorphous strokes. Their chromatic contrasts result in polyphonies of color that breathe inner freedom. The red, which like the other colors is presented in different shades and forms on the same canvas, plays the leading voice in all the paintings of this series. The resulting multiplicities of colors support a pictorial space of great haptic quality.”³

In the lower gallery, Sabine Moritz presents works on paper, and in particular a selection of oil drawings on lithograph from the extensive Sea King series. The Sea King is originally a US Navy military helicopter, developed to defy Soviet submarines during the 1950s. Each work is derived from a unique sketch of the helicopter, reproduced in lithography. The process of overpainting with oil painting on lithograph has been adopted by Moritz in the past, enabling her to create multiple versions of the same motif, playing with the use of color to obtain variations in the atmosphere and sometimes moving towards abstraction.

The exhibition continues at the bookshop, Librairie Marian Goodman

The exhibition continues at the bookshop, Librairie Marian Goodman, with the presentation of a selection of recent figurative charcoal drawings. A new exhibition catalogue of her abstract works, including an essay by Robert Fleck, will be launched at the bookshop during the opening reception. Robert Fleck is the former director of the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. He is currently the provost of the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf.

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Following the exhibition at the gallery, the Kunsthalle Rostock in Germany will present Sterne und Granit, a solo show of Sabine Moritz’s work from the 3rd of November 2019 to the 5th of January 2019. Recent important exhibitions of her work in Europe includes: Eden, Galerie Johann König, Berlin, Germany (2018); Neuland, Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany (2017); Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal, Germany (2014); Concrete and Dust, Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg, Belgium (2013); Lobeda, Kunsthaus sans titre, Potsdam, Germany (2011). Several catalogues and monographs on her œuvre have been published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, Cologne and HENI Publishing, London.

Sabine Moritz was born in 1969 in Quedlinburg, Germany. She studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach and at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf where she attended the classes of Markus Lüpertz and Gerhard Richter. She lives and works in Cologne.

¹ Sabine Moritz, quoted by Robert Fleck, “Abstraction Reinvented?”, Sabine Moritz, deeply unaware, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, 2019

² Robert Fleck, “Abstraction Reinvented?”, Sabine Moritz, deeply unaware, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, 2019

³ Ibid.