Boathouse, oil on canvas, 63 x 95 inches
Farewell, oil on canvas, 63 x 71 inches
Anonym, oil on canvas, 55 x 59 inches
Lakeland I, oil on canvas, 63 x 87 inches
Lakeland II, oil on canvas, 63 x 95 inches
Meuritz 2008, oil on canvas, 63 x 87 inches
After Work, oil on canvas, 63 x 87 inches
FOR IMMEADIATE RELEASE
Silke Schöner: new paintings
May 14 – June 13, 2009
Dillon Gallery is proud to present the second U.S. exhibition of paintings by Silke Schöner. With this new exhibit, Ms. Schöner furthers her exploration of lush open spaces enveloped in fields of pointedly clinical white observation. A stretch of detailed landscape with the occasional human or unaware creature becomes a suspended focus for all our shared involvements.
Her palette of color, beyond the stark polarizing white, is a limited monochrome of greens, browns and grays that combine to create a substantial, yet sparse naturalness. Paintings based on the day to day of her actual world are transformed into visual evocations of all our worlds; that detailed stretch becomes a wisp of bare essential we have all witnessed, or comfortably imagine to be a recollection.
In the sharing and presentation of her visions, Silke Schöner allows the painting to take on unique meaning for each individual viewer. There is no interference from place, time or season, and barely from the accomplished hand of the artist.
Silke Schöner: new paintings
May 14 – June 13, 2009
Dillon Gallery is proud to present the second U.S. exhibition of paintings by Silke Schöner. With this new exhibit, Ms. Schöner furthers her exploration of lush open spaces enveloped in fields of pointedly clinical white observation. A stretch of detailed landscape with the occasional human or unaware creature becomes a suspended focus for all our shared involvements.
Her palette of color, beyond the stark polarizing white, is a limited monochrome of greens, browns and grays that combine to create a substantial, yet sparse naturalness. Paintings based on the day to day of her actual world are transformed into visual evocations of all our worlds; that detailed stretch becomes a wisp of bare essential we have all witnessed, or comfortably imagine to be a recollection.
In the sharing and presentation of her visions, Silke Schöner allows the painting to take on unique meaning for each individual viewer. There is no interference from place, time or season, and barely from the accomplished hand of the artist.
SILKE SCHÖNER
Schöner has a BFA from Dresden Art School, 1991 and an MFA from Kassel Art School. Though she is from the far west of Germany, Schöner went east to study in Dresden soon after the Wall came down. Under the influence of the Leipzig school, she was exposed to an unbroken tradition of figurative painting that had oddly been protected behind the iron curtain during a time when this type of academic training had virtually disappeared in the west. This influence can be detected in her confident drawing, her strong compositional sense and her freedom from false gestures.Schöner’s deep engagement with the landscape of her native Germany focuses on the pictorial tension between the explicit and the implied, the seen and the unseen. Her canvases are panoramas of openness with long ribbons of detailed landscape unfurled across a stark white ground, leaving the viewer free to extrapolate what is left unstated. She says of her work: “In my landscape paintings, I try to find a state of open space and tranquility that resembles deep breathing.” All of her canvases begin with a pencil sketch of the entire scene, yet the sketch does not dictate the end result. Much of that drawing will remain unfinished, a barely visible presence, appearing only as the viewer approaches. Her work has been exhibited widely in Europe, Japan and the United States.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
- 2011 Dillon Gallery, Color in White, New York City
- 2009 Dillon Gallery, New Paintings, New York City
- 2008 Gallery Strenger, Tokyo, Japan
- 2007 Dillon Gallery, New Paintings, New York City
- 2006 Gallery Ulrich Gering, Frankfurt, Germany
- 2005 Olvier Ahlers Gallery, Goettingen, Germany
- 1999 Hafemann Gallery, Wiesbaden, Germany