[ART] Rita Ackermann's Disappearing Figures

Rita Ackermann (b. 1968) covers the canvas with slate-green paint and draws with dry pastels which she then blurs and blots out with water. In the blurring some lines are allowed to remain and stand out, while most of the drawings disappear in broad, smudged strokes. Like over-dimensioned chalkboards that mischievous kids have drawn on when the teacher is away.

At first when I entered the exhibition hall I desperately tried to find a point of reference, something that I could rest my eyes on and hold on to in these huge green paintings. I was about to dismiss them as boring, sloppy and unfinished, when suddenly the sublime greatness appeared. These are paintings that require some time and patience to penetrate. Rita Ackermann's large paintings make the time stand still. Intensely red, blue, green and black, vague traces of figures. Grand and intimate at the same time. The figures, young and slender girls, remind me a lot of Henry Darger's heroic Vivian Girls.

The versatile artist Rita Ackermann came from a Catholic upbringing in Hungary and moved to New York in the early nineties. She wanted to break with classic aesthetics and took advantage of the popular cultural shock that the relocation meant. Ackermann approached the exotic, purposely erased the past and felt free in that. Her background became blurred, much like the girls in the paintings.

Ackermann broke through with a solo exhibition in 1994. In the painting "Where did we come from? Where are we going? Who are we?" from the same year, she is paraphrasing Gauguin's famous 1897 painting "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" Bold, street-smart girls of their time are portrayed. They're active, self-dependent and do not apologize for their existence. At least on the surface. They also seemingly share the general disorientation and search for identity of teenage girls. In the water a young woman is seated among dolphins. Her hands are open and stretched towards the viewer, as a blessing by a Christ-like figure. Youth reminiscences? Traces or recognition - childhood and youth is already lost and unable to go back to. The basic feeling that Ackermann evokes is loss. The title of the exhibition is fittingly The Aesthetic of Disappearance, and the contrast and tension between the more distinct earlier works and the blurred paintings from 2013-2015 is most fascinating.

The large green paintings, "Chalkboard Paintings", are created by repeated wipes. The process is basically the same as on the blackboard in a classroom. What remains is a few distinct lines that will help you figure out what was depicted, fragments, and a chaotic cloud of chalk dust. You can see that she's classically schooled, some of the figures recalls those of Matisse, but there's something dark and alarming about them. The wipes are most powerful and physical, almost maniacal. Violence and beauty merges.

The exhibition's largest work, "Meditation on Violence Ⅰ" & "Meditation on Violence Ⅲ" refers to the avantgarde filmmaker Maya Deren's film of 1948 with the same title. Ackermann transforms movements in the practice of painting. Pictorial gestures in several layers. She draws. Erases. Draws. Erases. Sprays. Paints with brush. Constantly moves between different expressions. She erases the past, simultaneously as she approaches it. A battle between concrete and abstract forces, between perception and disappearance. In The Aesthetic of Disappearance perception is activated and put to the test. A stimulating challenge.

 @SteemSwede