Susanne Schwieter

“liquefy your body - then copy and paste the tongue.”

Schwieter´s works focus on transforming images whereby the blending of analogue and digital techniques play a special role in her compositions in which volatility, movement and gestures are key elements.

The recent body of works includes painting and sculpture, as well as multi-media installations.
In the large format paintings, digital elements are worked onto the surface, as well as beyond it. Schwieter explores procedural processes and finds in-between states. Digital techniques enable her serial works to be subjected to the infinite possibilities of reproduction, abstraction and reduction. In the digital manipulation of the imagery, “I harness the beauty of coincidence, of equivocal authorship and of the possibility for incalculable errors to be thrown up by Google and Photoshop.“

Large format painting is both an analogue and very physical process, which reveals the laws governing how a physical form emerges into space. The painted artwork is photographed, and in so doing, finds its way back into the digital realm. In this way, her artistic pursuits involve a continuous investigation of pictures of pictures of pictures, with one generation of imagery being passed on to the next. This interplay between digital techniques and analogue painting throws up questions about structure, the boundaries of physical attributes and the virtual world. “These reflect my own yearning for the dissolution of boundaries.”

The hybrid structure of her sculptural works, which shimmer between object and minimalism, are playing with the intertwining of the performative moment and abstraction. Imbued with an attitude, an aspiration, the sculptures often extend to large-scale displays and combined with the paintings or prints they treat their surroundings as a stage, exploring the concept of movement on both a formal and structural level. What results is a sort of show without performers, creating virtual spaces from moments of volatility.

What is it about your studio space that inspires you?

the huge space as playground, the light

What themes do you pursue?

movement, transformation, morphing, volatility

If you could install your art absolutely anywhere, where would that be?

on the highway and in the sky

If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?

one of the big Christopher Wool enamel on linen paintings

If you weren´t an artist, what would you be doing?

camera operator

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