Known for unconventional canvases imbued with organic materials, spiritual symbols and enigmatic text, painter, sculptor, and engraver Karin Lambrecht is one of the pioneering artists of Brazil's 80s Generation.
Read MoreBorn in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Karin Lambrecht began her studies at the Atelier Livre of the Municipality of Porto Alegre in 1973. From 1977 to 1978, she studied lithography under Danúbio Gonçalves. A year later, Lambrecht graduated with a BA in Drawing and Engraving from the Art Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
Lambrecht took part in the postal art networks of the late 1970s, a means for Brazilian artists isolated under the military dictatorship to forge international artistic connections. In 1980, Lambrecht moved to West Berlin to study painting under post-war artist Raimund Girke at the Hochschule der Künste.
In 1984, returning to Brazil at the tail end of over 20 years of military dictatorship, Lambrecht took part in the influential exhibition Como Vai Você, Geração 80? (How Are You Doing, 80s Generation?) in Rio de Janeiro. Geração 80 embodies a cultural movement of Brazilian artists rooted in contemporary painting and gestural abstraction.
Lambrecht also met Louise Bourgeois in New York during a residency in 1986. Both artists shared interests in the internal world and materials such as fabrics, needles, and wood.
Karin Lambrecht engages with gestural abstraction within painting and sculpture, often incorporating organic or found materials on torn, hand-stitched, and charred surfaces and fabrics. Her expressive works often incorporate metaphysical motifs and isolated text.
In the 1980s, Lambrecht explored new formal possibilities within painting, engaging with the approaches to materiality employed by Joseph Beuys, Robert Rauschenberg, and the Arte Povera movement.
Challenging the conventional stretched canvas, Lambrecht exposed or removed the chassis, allowing for a more spontaneous compositional format. The picture surface comprises a collage of sewn-together segments of torn and burnt textiles along with paper and industrial debris, which is then covered in broad, gestural strokes of vibrant pigments. In O destino: Muss es sein — Es muss sein (1986), red pigments in acrylic medium cover a surface of canvas and scrap metal suspended by a metal frame.
Ester ou Ester entra no patio interior da casa do rei (1987) exemplifies Lambrecht's references to religious traditions and aesthetics, which permeates many of her works. The installation for the 19th São Paulo Biennale references a Jewish narrative also found in the Christian Bible.
From the 1990s, Lambrecht began to add organic materials to the surface of her canvases, alongside discarded industrial materials. In works such as O Lago (1992), the artist combines wire and iron pieces with dirt, charcoal, and acrylic on paper and canvas to create texturally rich chromatic fields of predominantly red or blue.
Text became prominent too, whether in printed form, like the few visible words of the charred, soiled, and paint-covered book in Untitled (1990), or handwritten, like in Untitled (1993), where an enigmatic column of similar words and a set of equations are written in charcoal on the canvas.
Inspired by practices of sacrifice and the slaughter of animals, from 1997 to 2008 Lambrecht worked on her 'Registros de sangue' (Records of Blood) series. These works were made using blood and viscera collected by the artist during traditional processes of animal slaughter in Brazil, Uruguay, and Israel, among other countries.
Invited to participate in the 25th São Paulo Biennale in 2002, Lambrecht created an installation comprising four white dresses on a wooden frame, three of which were covered in animal blood. Inset on the floor, three cruciform depressions held more bloodied cloths.
In Lambrecht's post-2010 works, handwritten text often appears in Portuguese, German, and, since moving to Broadstairs in the U.K. in 2017, English. These later works have focused more on expressing the artist's surroundings. In her series 'Territórios d'Areia' (2011), Lambrecht describes with colour and words the landscape of Jerusalem, which she visited in 2008. In her later 2019 'Winter' paintings, the artist explores the sensations of the seasons in her new Kentish home.
Karin Lambrecht has been the subject of both solo exhibition and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include Winter, Cecilia Brunson Projects, London (2021); Karin Lambrecht — Entre nós uma passagem, Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO), São Paulo (2018); Karin Lambrecht — Assim assim, Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro (2017); Nem eu, Nem tu: Nós, Espaço Cultural Santander, Porto Alegre (2017); Pintura e desenho, Galeria do Instituto Ling, Porto Alegre (2015); Eclipse, Pinacoteca da Feevale, Novo Hamburgo, Brazil (2013); Cores, palavras e cruzes, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo (2012); Karin Lambrecht, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre (2002); Karin Lambrecht, Petrus Kirche, Berlin (1987).
Group exhibitions include Alegria — A natureza-morta nas coleções, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) (2019); Tempos sensíveis, Museu Oscar Niemeyer (MON), Curitiba, Brazil (2018); Clube da Gravura: 30 anos, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), São Paulo (2016); O Espirito de Cada Epoca, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF), Ribeirão Preto, Brazil (2015); Anos 70 Arte como Questão, Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO), São Paulo (2007); Lágrimas, Mosteiro de Alcobaça, Portugal (2005); Arte Amazonas, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany (1994); Brazil, la Nueva Generation, Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela (1990); Como vai você, Geração 80?, Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro (1984).
Lambrecht's website can be found here, and her Instagram can be found here.
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2022
