Opening:
Thursday, August, 18, 2022,
6 – 9 p.m.

Exhibition: 19.8.-18.9.2022

Visiting by appointment

Irina Matthes is a sculptor and photo artist. She lives and works in Düsseldorf. She studied with Georg Herold at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. On the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale (until November 27, 2022), she participated in a collateral event on Guidecca entitled ” Under the Boat” . The exhibition was curated by the internationally renowned architect and curator Daniel Capra.

In my rooms in Düsseldorf Irina Matthes shows new photographic works from the years 2021/2022.

In this exhibition, she creates hypbrid works in which she combines monochrome color fields with photographic building shots or urban elements and thereby models them into a new unique overall concept. She choreographs and stages photographs with powerful color surfaces. The juxtaposition of abstract image planes with figurative spatial image shots leads to an irritation of the overall picture. Advertising already used signal colors in its visual messages as “eye-catchers” in the 80s/90s to emphasize the advertising texts (usually one or two lines).

Irina Matthes is not concerned with advertising messages, of course, but with the poetry of simple images. Thus, facades can be recognized, which seem to come from an earlier time, which has finally passed away. However, two colored stripes appear at the lower end of the grid in front of it. They are quotes for the new, for a change that seems to announce itself quietly. In another picture a rusty metal bar stands on a place against which an empty chestnut cooking stand leans. Two objects that have nothing to do with each other in everyday life. Through their physical connection they move away from the purely object-like to beings that enter into an emotional connection.

This new exhibition draws one in as it removes the demarcation between photography and painting. It is no longer about the technical distinction of what is allowed in a painting, what is allowed in a photograph, what is real and what is fiction. For our reality, our everyday life, has long since eluded this once clear demarcation. The modeling of life – that which is the assertion – has become the new reality. The images tell their own story, inspire new ways of seeing, which immediately become an expansion of our emotional and pictorial repertoires.

We look forward to your visit.

With very kind regards

Martin Leyer-Pritzkow