Have any questions?
+44 1234 567 890
Pinky Promise – Ronia Adl-Tabatabai, Alina Röbke, Poppy Luley
Location: EMDE GALLERY - Mainz
With the group exhibition "Pinky Promise", Emde Gallery brings together three female artists who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Mainz and completed their master's degree last year: Ronia Adl-Tabatabai, Alina Röbke and Poppy Luley.
In paintings and prints, cyanotypes on paper and canvases as well as sculptures made of ceramics, the artists deal with painterly questions in different ways, as with questions concerning the interfaces to other media.
The exhibition was curated by the artists in collaboration with Emde Gallery. The artists also coordinated their selection of works so that their works form mutual points of reference, but also function independently of each other. The title of the exhibition "Pinky Promise" alludes to the pinky swear, which is especially popular among children to seal a promise, and stands on the one hand for the solidary bond between the artists, and on the other hand for their bond to art and the creative process.
Ronia Adl-Tabatabai
In her works, Ronia Adl-Tabatabai deals with what she herself calls the "silent power relations" within painting. The focus is on the motif of the brushstroke or the brush marks themselves. In her works, she abstracts and varies this motif, sometimes applying the brushstroke with tools other than the brush. The artist often applies the brushstroke monumentally on large canvases, but also in smaller formats as silkscreens, sometimes isolated, sometimes accompanied by overlapping layers of paint. In its isolation and size, the expressive, painterly gesture becomes an independent form that also wants to be seen as such.
In the work "Radschläger" (cartwheeler), for example, two abstract areas of colour in powerful yellow and violet are superimposed on a dark grey to almost black, oversized brushstroke. The brushstroke itself is characterized by a fast, circular movement and sets a striking accent attracting the viewer's attention. In the screen prints, on the other hand, whose templates are produced digitally, the brushstroke often appears embedded in structures reminiscent of knitting patterns.
According to Ronia Adl-Tabatabai, the expressive gesture of the brushstroke still perpetuates the image of the painterly genius, the individual artist in whom the creative potency of the male artist in particular finds expression. The artist's aim is to counter this cult of the male painter genius in her works and to demystify the common notion through reinterpretation, analysis and deconstruction. In doing so, she moves between intuition and reflection as well as a gesturalexpressive and analytical-conceptual approach.
Ronia Adl-Tabatabai's works are characterized by an exploration of the meaning of the brushstroke and its symbolic power, thus offering a critical reflection on subtle power structures within painting.
Alina Röbke
Alina Röbke presents large- and small-format cyanotypes on fabric and paper, in which she explores the painterly potential of this photographic process, and which are entirely characterized by experimentation, the performative and the processual.
The cyanotype is a very old photographic technique that, like the photogram, is carried out without a camera and produces intensely blue images. The artist has been working with this technique for some time. In the exhibition at Emde Gallery, she presents new works on paper and canvas, most of which were created during her stay in Palermo at the end of last year, where she was part of the Nouveau Grand Tour Residency Programme at Palazzo Butera.
The cyanotypes are preceded by a long preparatory phase. The support material, i.e. the canvas or paper, is first treated – or rather painted – by the artist with a light-sensitive solution in the dark, then she exposes it to sunlight outdoors. The characteristic blue tones (also known as Prussian blue or Berlin blue) form in the exposed areas. To fix the image, it is washed out in a water bath or under running water.
The performative character of this process, in which the artist is physically involved, usually remains invisible to the viewer, but plays a central role and also determines, for example, the positioning of the paintings outdoors. The result is experimental, sometimes very abstract pictorial spaces in which Alina Röbke also incorporates the strategy of the photogram, for example when she attaches the prepared supports in front of a fence or railing casting shadows or hangs them between bushes or trees, with the objects sometimes more, sometimes less clearly leaving their trace as a white silhouette.
A good example of this is the picture "Palazzo Butera, secondo piano (exposed in Palermo, No. 1)": Both halves of the picture are clearly different from each other. In the upper half, fragmented details of a railing can be seen, with clear contours. The lower half of the picture, on the other hand, shows blurred sections that look like cloudy lakes and in which blurred patches of colour intermingle. The artist deliberately gives a lot of leeway to the play with chance in combination with controlled elements.
This interplay of the controlled and the uncontrolled is another important feature of Alina Röbke's art, which explores the potential of the photographic process in a new, very singular way.
Poppy Luley
In the exhibition at Emde Gallery, Poppy Luley shows new ceramic works to which she has recently devoted herself in depth. Additionally, her work also includes 2D animation and film. She regards the ceramic sculptures as an antithesis to the fleetingness that is of essence to her animations and films.
Poppy Luley's colour-glazed ceramics are familiar objects, bordering on the abstract and – apart from the chess pieces and a sculpture depicting leaf-like floral forms – inspired by playground equipment, first and foremost them being slides and swings. At times, the motifs blur into abstraction, making the rigid material appear mobile and flowing and only remotely reminiscent of the real objects. This impression is reinforced by the glaze, which has a very painterly aesthetic, with cheerful, light and delicate colours predominating.
Some of them are very fragile compositions with elegant and playful details such as shells or scrolls, reminiscent of the formal language and ornamentation of Baroque and Rococo art. Poppy Luley's sculptures also create a connection to the Baroque and Rococo periods in terms of content. In particular, the swing, which was a popular motif in the art of this period, stands as a symbol for childhood, freedom, light-heartedness, joy, romance and much more – positive associations that can also be found in Poppy Luley's works.
Overall, Poppy Luley's ceramics are characterized by a playful approach, which is expressed in the exploration of interfaces with other media such as film and painting as well as in the experimentation with glazes. In this way, she not only reaches the physical limits of the material, but also creates a formal language of its very own aesthetics and expressiveness.
Artists
Newsletter Sign up
Please send me your newsletter about events/exhibitions of the EMDE Gallery regularly and revocably according to your privacy policy by email. (After subscribing, you will receive an email with a confirmation link.)