SOLO EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
The World's Leading Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
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The World's Leading Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
Monika
Pfannmüller
GERMANY
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“The process of painting is not only manual but also a mental and spiritual process. A kind of dialogue develops with the painting.”
Monika Pfannmüller grew up in Antwerp (Belgium). After graduating from high school, she first studied music with a major in flute at the Cologne University of Music. She studied German literature and history at the University of Cologne and the Università degli studi di Firenze (scholarship from the DAAD) and taught flute at a youth music school for several years.
This painting was inspired by the idea of a place that I longed to see. The warm-cold contrast plays an important compositional role. The softly shaded turquoise area contrasts with the dense shimmering structures in shades of green and suggests a view over water into a jungle.
At the same time, she was intensively involved with textile art. She then completed a graphic design education in Ingo Jung's office in Munich, where she came into contact with free painting through Meera Hashimoto. As a result, she got attracted more and more towards painting. Important teachers included Harald Naegeli, Meera Hashimoto, and Georg Gartz.
This painting lives from the surfaces and lines inclined at different angles, the shaded areas, and the clear, bright colors. The title is an allusion to the Japanese Zen poet Basho and came spontaneously as there is something ambiguous about this painting and yet a great clarity.
For many years she has taught drawing and painting and manages creative events for well-known German companies such as Deutsche Telekom. She has exhibited regularly since 1990 including in the LA Art Show, ARTe Wiesbaden, Discovery Art Fair Cologne, Augustusburg Castle, Brühl, and Nymphenburg Castle, Munich. Her paintings were bought by well-known German companies such as Deutz AG, Fraport, and Tetrapak and shown in a WDR TV-Production.
“My themes are space, which could be understood here as both outer and inner mental space, along with light, color effects, and the play with a horizon line.”
Monika Pfannmüller mainly works with oil paint, which has an incomparable color presence and color brilliance and suppleness. She paints and spatulates the paint in many layers, partially wiping it off again or blurring it.
“In a world characterized by sensory overload, especially from a visual point of view, the viewer finds calm for eyes and mind in my paintings.”
Her main source of inspiration is nature: impressions of certain incidences of light, of the rhythm in the alternation of light and shadow, of colors and color contrasts, which then - often much later - are transformed into a pictorial idea.
The intense colors of the Algarve coast gave this painting its title. The wide softly shaded area in emerald tones contrasts with the narrow structured area in reddish terracotta tones.
“Although starting from a clear pictorial idea and planning the composition of the painting, my best paintings are the ones that surprise me at the end.”
This painting is almost monochrome light grey-blue with small sprinkles of orange, giving the impression of residual light. It unfolds an immense depth effect and the viewer can get lost in the distance. Due to its calm surfaces, it radiates a great silence.
She is not concerned with a concrete representational representation, but rather with evoking a certain mood in the viewer and initiating a contemplative, meditative experience. In this respect, she stands in the tradition of abstract expressionism and lyrical abstraction. In this regard, her affinity for music is also reflected in her work.
The composition of this painting is based on the complementary contrast. Because of its structures and the rising movement, this painting might evoke the impression of sunlight breaking through the clouds, and could also be understood as a homage to Tiepolo.
Her paintings are characterized by an extremely fine sense of color, as well as meditative qualities and a strong spatial effect. Sometimes they are more monochrome, sometimes color contrasts, e.g., complementary contrast, play a decisive compositional role.
This pictorial composition plays with deviations from the horizontal and with surfaces and lines inclined against each other. The warm yellow and orange tones reflect the early evening light, my favorite hour by the sea.
Some of the paintings, predominantly in shades of blue and blue-green, suggest width and depth through their subtle color gradients. The prevailing shades of blue give the viewer space, are not intrusive, but rather recede and thus draw the viewer into the painting.
This pictorial composition plays with deviations from the horizontal and with surfaces inclined in different angles. The cool light colors evoke the impression of early morning on the beach.
“My artworks touch light and dark areas, structured, multicolored areas and soft color gradients alternate in a natural rhythm and evoke in the viewer echoes of water, sea, sky, and cosmos.”
Here I was concerned with the question of whether silence is rather light or dark when it is represented. I realized that there are both: e.g. the silence of the night and the stillness of snow. This deep ultramarine blue painting with little yellow and green breaking through, evokes the impression of infinite space and represents the "dark" silence.
Monika’s artworks, with their dense, shimmering structures that alternate with blurred areas, suggest the tangle of foliage and lichen, of incident light and drops of water. Also, some of her paintings play with the horizon line, dissolving it or inclining it slightly and thus slightly unsettling the viewer without the painting ever becoming unbalanced.
Here I was concerned with the question of whether silence is rather light or dark when it is represented. I realized that there are both: e.g. the silence of the night and the stillness of snow. This very light blue and light green painting, with some areas in ultramarine, yellow, and green breaking through, is my version of the “light” silence.
For the most part, her paintings deliberately remain ambiguous and leave viewers room for their own associations. They open up intuitively and atmospherically and, depending on the color tone and application of paint, radiate serenity, lightness and freshness or clarity, strength and meditative calm.
This painting takes up the metaphor common in the Poetry of German Romanticism, which associates blue eyes with the sea. The alternation of light and dark areas, structured areas and soft color gradients evokes the impression of surf and breaking waves. The partially dissolved horizon line gives the composition stability.