It took the night to believe (024)

Andersen's Contemporary is pleased to announce the first solo show, It took the night to believe, by Anja Schwörer (born 1971, living in Berlin) in our Berlin venue near Hamburger Bahnhof. Schwörers work explores the different possibilities of formal or non-figurative painting. She synthesizes a diverse interplay between construction and deconstruction through the use of batik and/or bleaching of surfaces. Drawing upon her strong interest in heavy metal music, Schwörer chemically alters her materials, including black velvet, denim and canvas, that are later stretched to form enigmatic facades. Esoteric and celestial entities manifest themselves through the material process of deletion, lending a metaphysical interpretation to the altered surfaces. Often these works become over-painted with geometric constructions, creating a tension between the matrixes and their arcane backgrounds – or you can say a hippie turned into heavy metal. In her own words: In my mostly black paintings, which are made using a batik process of folding, bleaching and dyeing, there is a visible struggle between a psychedelic handicraft process and a formal painterly language. I seek to point out whe re the frontiers between the known and the unknown, the scientific and the spiritual component of abstract art as rooted in philosophies of mathematics and geometry, converge. Schwörer has developed her own highly individual abstract language exploring the spiritual component of science and abstract art. She furthermore questions the hierarchy of media since this kind of handicraft is taboo in contemporary art. The geometric compositions of Schwörer seem to be a kaleidoscopic attempt to uproot fixed attributions, to address their constructed quality and present them in a moveable and detached process.