At Art Cologne 2019, Hauser & Wirth dedicates its presentation to the Hungarian-born, New York-based artist Rita Ackermann with a selection of new paintings from her Mama, Sister and Chalkboard series. The paintings on view evolve from bodies of works previously shown at Ackermann’s solo exhibition Brother and Sister at Hauser & Wirth Zürich earlier this year and continue to explore the artist’s manifestations of movement, line and gesture.
Throughout her practice, Rita Ackermann has interrogated the boundaries of figuration in contemporary painting and has sought to blur the lines between formal representation and abstraction. The artist’s ghost-like compositions are achieved through sweeping, determined gestures of drawing, painting and erasing, wherein figures rise to the surface only to dissolve again. From her early figurative works made in the 1990s to her recently acclaimed series on view in Cologne, the artist has continued to deconstruct and reconsider the limitations of the figurative line.
The selection of new works includes the artist’s Mama and Sister paintings; abstract renderings of characters which take personal subject matter as a point of departure. The abstractions reach new heights in Ackermann’s Mama paintings, as she obscures her various pencil-drawn figures through thick swatches of brightly coloured oil paint. A continuation of the artist’s signature Chalkboard paintings are also on view, which depict figures drawn from chalk shifting in and out of sight on the green primed canvas. Ackermann’s exploration of the accumulation and deletion of line charges her paintings with a powerful rhythm, which moves with varying momentum across the works’ surfaces.
Hauser & Wirth represents these artists: