SYBILLE PATTSCHECK

Sybille Pattscheck’s paintings engage with this seemingly weightless, immaterial colourfulness. She takes us on a journey to perceive light, space, and colour as a sensual experience. To do this, she uses translucent beeswax coloured with oil paint or pigments, and applied with a broad brush to various supports. This old technique called encaustic painting has been known since antiquity. It enables the colour particles in the wax to unfold their luminosity, depending in the light situation, so that they seem to float.

In the works entitled Metachrome, horizontal and vertical layers of paint create the impression of a dense translucent colour web, with colour shades shining forth from the depth of the work, so that we can follow the process of painting when we look at the works. The materiality of the wax, the brush stroke, and the texture of the applied paint remain visible.

The series of Farblichtungen, the interplay of colour, light and space is further explored and intensified. The paintings are not on wood, as with the Metachromes, but rather on a transparent body of acrylic glass, which allows the beholder to experience seeing a light-filled space. The brushstroke and the materiality of the wax are hardly visible anymore on the matte monochrome pictorial plane.

The contrasting colour tone of the paintings’ edges flows into the monochrome pictorial plane and influences our colour perception. The result is a diffusely luminous colour space that represents nothing but itself, while at the same time offering a projection surface for numerous associations. Sometimes it is reminiscent of the colours of the sky.

Sybille Pattscheck (born in 1958) studied painting at Kunstakademie Münster under Ulrich Erben and graduated in 1986 as a master student. Throughout her career, she has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Kunstpreis der Künstler, Große Kunstausstellung Düsseldorf in 2018. In 2024, she had a two-month residency at Cité International des Arts in Paris.

Since 1985, her works have been exhibited at galleries, museums and art associations, both in solo and group shows, in Germany (Düsseldorf, Cologne), the Netherlands (Goes, Amsterdam) Spain (Bilbao) India (Mumbay), Lithuania (Vilnius) and the USA (New York).