Kathrin Thiele | The Big Falling
January 20 - March 3, 2007
Opening: Saturday, January 20, 11 am - 9 pm

The young Leipzig painter Kathrin Thiele [*1980] is exhibiting a series of small-format pictures titled »The Big Fall« at the Filipp Rosbach Galerie gallery. Aside from a few landscape motifs, most of the pictures show groups of figures or individual figures - often with recognizable motifs like Cossacks or cowboys - frozen in the middle of action. It thereby seems doubtful that the action will continue: a group of Cossack dancers in mid-leap; another carrying a wild boar on his back; couples dancing the Charleston in almost grotesque positions; a fistfight; a stage sword fight; etc. The title of the series, for which follows the eponymous depiction of an elephant »begging« like a dog, suggests the probability that the situation will end in a fiasco, and yet the figures don't seem as if they are in danger at all; rather, they appear as rigid and unmoving as statues. And precisely that is the artist's intention: the pictures are frozen moments, captured situations. They don't aim to depict motions, but to radiate calm, despite the activities they are engaged in.

Atmosphere is indeed important to the artist, which is why she works with a reduced range of hues somewhat reminiscent of colorized black-and-white photographs. But since they are seldom painted with truly bright colors, the overall mood is gloomy, as if the scenes played out in the twilight or in moonlight. Added to this is that something unclear and enigmatic attaches to them, which the artist consciously arranges by strewing in mysterious details and which make it difficult - on second glance - for the viewer to grasp the situation unambiguously: Isn't there a floor under the dance group? Don't these balloons look like a huge bunch of grapes? Doesn't that bear have a human foot? And this wild boar hooves instead of trotters? Beyond that, the faces of those depicted are usually hard to make out or are even completely black, which makes it impossible to read their expressions. The longer you look at them, the less you know what you see, and so they have the effect of a clown encountered in the dark.
Martin J. Müller

Kathrin Thiele is a master student with Neo Rauch at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.

We look forward to your visit! Josef Filipp, Michaela Rosbach and Jörg Rosbach
The gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.