Anne Neukamp
Shell
Artist
Anne Neukamp
(1976, Düsseldorf), German
Original Title
Shell
Date2019
Mediumacrylic, oil and tempera on canvas
Dimensions95 × 70 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionAnne Neukamp is a German painter based in Berlin. Her canvases are inspired by ordinary banal objects, well-known symbols, and signs or elements of digital origin. These can be understood as part of a visual archive of consumer society, omnipresent in our daily surroundings. Neukamp’s subtle manipulation of these elements rids them of their unambiguous identifiability and transforms them into unidentifiable signs situated on the boundary between figuration, abstraction, and ornamentation. They are often slanted, enlarged, multiplied, or contorted into enigmatic silhouettes. The mechanical repetition of these shapes evades hierarchization and allows the author to disrupt their anticipated fetishization. The viewer perceives the motifs as familiar, yet their clear recognition and identification continually escapes. By deconstructing their legibility, Neukamp highlights the close connection between symbols of consumerist environments and those of digital environments, with both geared toward the fast transmissions of information and its psychological impacts. This in turn spotlights the manner in which we perceive logos and the way they automatically become stored in our memory. Neukamp’s visual transformation of these symbols rids them of their pre-programmed content and spotlights their hidden metaphorical and psychological potential through which brands influence and manipulate our consumer behavior. Her works simultaneously focus on the aesthetics and communicative function of these symbols. The omission of shadows endows the paintings with a strange elusiveness and further exacerbates the illegibility of their content. Neukamp’s paintings are defined noy only by their materiality and technical precision, but also by subtle irregularities arising from her creative process, which can only be appreciated through the viewer’s physical presence in front of the artwork. Neukamp makes use of the specific qualities of the raw cotton canvas and of a sophisticated combination of oil, tempera, and acrylic paint. The powerful expression of her paintings is based on contrasts of rough and smooth textures, neutral and vibrant colors, and an oscillation between thick, three-dimensional forms and flat, monochromatic surfaces. Such juxtapositions intensify the work’s ambiguity and further liberate its visual forms from their established contexts. The paintings are created through a meticulous technique of layering oil, tempera, and acrylic paints, producing an illusory effect not dissimilar to that of contemporary digital aesthetics which are essentially based on illusion and a suppression of reality.
Shell (2019) depicts an open blue case passing through a back-and-white stripe which can be perceived both as a graphic form and a real-world object. Much as Neukamp’s other work, this canvas can be interpreted in multiple ways. Its aesthetic simplicity and repeatability evoke readings based on the ideas of minimalism, which engendered a fundamental redefinition of modernist sculpture and art more generally. The simple motif can also be understood as addressing the fragility of stability, dependent on delicately balancing one’s own weight against gravitation. However, the painting’s vagueness and disconnect from a commonly decodable symbolic language also allows space for a more indeterminate, subjective line of associations which differentiates the work from traditional minimalist rationalization.
Anne Neukamp (*1976, Düsseldorf) began studying painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. She proceeded to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Dresden, where she experienced some of the remaining atmosphere of the Eastern Bloc. This encounter with the East helped her understand the close connection between socio-political systems and the ways people think and communicate. Her studies in an institution of the former Eastern Bloc also influenced her emphasis on the scrupulous craftsmanship of her canvases. In 2015, she was awarded the prestigious Pollock Krasner Foundation grant. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Columbia University (New York City, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), the KAI 10│Arthena Foundation (Düsseldorf), the Heidelberger Kunstverein, and the 5th Prague Biennale.
Shell (2019) depicts an open blue case passing through a back-and-white stripe which can be perceived both as a graphic form and a real-world object. Much as Neukamp’s other work, this canvas can be interpreted in multiple ways. Its aesthetic simplicity and repeatability evoke readings based on the ideas of minimalism, which engendered a fundamental redefinition of modernist sculpture and art more generally. The simple motif can also be understood as addressing the fragility of stability, dependent on delicately balancing one’s own weight against gravitation. However, the painting’s vagueness and disconnect from a commonly decodable symbolic language also allows space for a more indeterminate, subjective line of associations which differentiates the work from traditional minimalist rationalization.
Anne Neukamp (*1976, Düsseldorf) began studying painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. She proceeded to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Dresden, where she experienced some of the remaining atmosphere of the Eastern Bloc. This encounter with the East helped her understand the close connection between socio-political systems and the ways people think and communicate. Her studies in an institution of the former Eastern Bloc also influenced her emphasis on the scrupulous craftsmanship of her canvases. In 2015, she was awarded the prestigious Pollock Krasner Foundation grant. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Columbia University (New York City, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), the KAI 10│Arthena Foundation (Düsseldorf), the Heidelberger Kunstverein, and the 5th Prague Biennale.
