Galerie Fenna Wehlau - Bettina Bürkle

P e r c e p t i o n    a n d   S p a c e                       

about the work of Bettina Bürkle
  

After longer stays in New York in the late eighties and early nineties, perception of the surroundings the artist lives in play a special role. Different elements of urban architecture become the starting point of her works.

With their title Boxes, the objects comprise such notions as containers or cases as well as architectural elements like window structures, roof tops, air conditioning installations, or even architecture itself.

The serial variations of open and closed volumes start relating to the space surrounding them in sequences on the floor or on the wall.

After a working residence in Paris in 1996/97, the focus shifts to the window as an aspect of the subject of light and space. Windows connect the inside and the outside, private and public (urban) space. On a closer view of the objects, there are often new perspectives, shape shiftings and colour configurations. Some of the monochrome objects are only perceived in their perspective because of the light falling in.

The Window works lead up to the Wedge works (corresponding oblique openings). The wedge works are often bi-partite, and the varying positioning of the two elements to each other can change their view surprisingly and extremely. The volume, the colour, the light and the perspective of perception are the issues and become the concrete experience of the work. The different monochrome colours chime together, abstractly and autonomously in the form of their composition, without any representational character left. The works are sculptures and paintings in space.

Time and again, Bettina Bürkle accompanies her plastic themes with coloured linocuts or woodcuts, utilizing the two-dimensional medium to formulate and play through the pictorial moments that are important for her, such as different perspectives of perception.

In the consequence of this work, the most recent years bring out the Folding and Sliding Objects. Their appearance can be altered by the viewer himself, by opening up the image or folding it shut, or by shifting the surfaces respectively. The changeability of the appearance of the objects is an essential part of the works. Here, the viewer can make his own experiences of looking. He takes up more or less coincidental constellations – other optional stages are left to imagination. 

In these works the playful experimental and intuitive side of developing an image comes to the fore. The artist does not look for the ultimate, final formulation in a system, but plays off experience against the unexpected. One presumes logic and then recognizes an independent, open development that formulates its aesthetic significance rather as a questioning assumption than as a ready-made answer.

Since 2003 the artist has developed sliding objects with surfaces made of coloured acrylic glass – in its transparence, the material opens up a completely new dimension. The colours mix, there are colour spaces made up by several layers, which can be added, condensed, and again be moved apart. A further expansion is created by the reflection of the space and of the viewer. It is the own perception that decides whether the view of the object stands out, or the view of the reflection, or if the points of view alternate.

As the concept of the works is closely connected with the space and/or the architecture, it is a logic consequence to bring back the objects into a relation with them. Bettina Bürkle`s works embody a new context-related flexibility which has developed since modern art in the 20th century, and which enters into a vivid dialogue with the respective space.