A large catalogue introducing the dreamlike paintings of Corinne Wasmuht: fantastical landscapes layered upon each other, allowing the viewer to enter numerous dimensions at once.
Wasmuht is widely known for her large-scale, multi-layered paintings. Her work derives from an array of pictorial inventions, culminating in a kind of aesthetic tension that aims to reconcile what the artist refers to as the “dualism of modernism.” For her pictorial ideas, the artist chooses from a continuously maintained archive of images of daily life, nature, science and art. In her paintings these images, both appropriated and her own, fuse into staged productions with references to contemporary contexts. Often lacking any one-point perspective and layered with images and color, the paintings generate an excess visibility and density that disallow the viewer any firm ground or solid perception. Because the space of the observer is at odds with the pictorial space, the viewer is compelled to follow the variable shifts of the images and colors as they come forth and recede.
Published following the artist's exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York, from September 4 to October 4, 2008.
After being raised in Argentina, Corinne Wasmuht (born 1964, Dortmund, Germany, lives and works in Berlin) then returned to Germany where she studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. She currently teaches at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. Wasmuht's work has been exhibited extensively in both Europe and the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include the Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2010) and Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2014). Wasmuht has received several distinguished awards among them the Art Award of the City of Offenburg (2011) and most recently the Käthe-Kollwitz Prize (2014). Her work has been included in numerous international exhibitions including the Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis (2011) and the 54th Venice Bienniale (2011). Her work is also in the permanent collections of the most important German institutions including the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Staedel Museum in Frankfurt, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Berlin's Nationalgalerie and the Von der Heydt-Museum.
