Sylke von Gaza

Works Folder

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Roth painting

Roth painting/ 180 x 180 cm / 2010 /

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Purple Sky

Purple Sky/ 180 x 180 cm / 2010 /

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Bridghet und Irene

Bridghet/ 160 x 160 cm / 2010 /

Irene/ 160 x 160 cm / 2010 /

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small red veil painting lh 1 & small grey veil painting lh 1

small red veil painting lh 1/ 60 x 60 cm / 2009 /

small grey veil painting lh 1/ 60 x 60 cm / 2009 /

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grey veil master painting lh

grey veil master painting lh/ 180 x 180 cm / 2009 /

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transparent purple veil painting 1/ 130 x 130cm / 2008 /

purple veil painting

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red veil painting

red veil master painting 6/ 180 x 180 cm / 2008 /

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Artist Portrait by BMW / Flash video»the ideal grey«

> Flash video on: www.vongaza.com

/ © Sylke von Gaza and Bavaria Film GmbH – beta version October 2007 /

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early works

bright white on grey 1/ 160 x 160 cm / 2005 /

bright white on olive green/ 150 x 130 cm / 2005 /

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/ Photos: Vera Nowottny / Translation: Steven Lindberg /

In autumn 2008, Petra Giloy-Hirtz conducted the following interview with the artist after having visited her studio in Munich. Petra Giloy-Hirtz, PhD, lives and works as a curator and an author in Munich.

From the Grey to the ColourfulInterview with Sylke von Gaza

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Giloy-Hirtz: During my most recent visit to your studio, I saw your Purple Paintings and was sur-prised: by their presence and pathos, by their great emotional power. Previously, I was only familiar with grey in your work.von Gaza: Yes, I worked in grey for three years. That time was very important for me. Grey is a colour which brings me to the origin of things. It is neither black nor white, but rather a mixture of those two non-colours. So it is something with which one begins. It enabled me to establish the form of my painting without being distracted by colour as such.

Giloy-Hirtz: The thing which connects the two series – the grey and the purple – and thus gives your work a conceptual quality is the form: the division of the picture plane into two parts by a horizontal line. What does this sort of reduction of painting to a few elements mean to you?von Gaza: You can do practically anything in painting. First, I had to liberate myself from the cliché in order to penetrate to the essence of painting. I try to leave everything out which has no further meaning for me. Such renunciation is painful. The viewer might get the impression I have a conceptual approach. In fact, I am an emo-tional painter.

Giloy-Hirtz: What do you say to the associations your paintings evoke in the viewer with regard to subject matter: horizon or fissure, veil, drapery? Do your works have a narrative level?von Gaza: No, I work non-representationally, ab- stractly. Nevertheless, without any direct intention

on my part, a deeper meaning is communicated to the viewer. It derives above all from the way I work. Working with just a few things, I try to de-pict everything which is important to me. In the process, a path is formulated involuntarily and becomes visible. The process of creation is im-portant to me, not just the finished painting.

Giloy-Hirtz: What does the horizon mean to you?von Gaza: Yes, the horizon, the line which sep-arates the two planes. It’s pretty much the only thing I have left. I try to put everything into this line. I begin the painting process there. It leads me through the painting. I begin with concentra-tion and then let it go immediately when the brush filled with paint glides over the canvas. The hori-zon is always sensed. I concentrate and find the middle. Once I sketched the horizon as an exper-iment. That painting had no charm for me. But it was an interesting experiment.

Giloy-Hirtz: How do you achieve this diaphanous, transparent quality in your painting? It is clear that monochrome layers of paint are hidden be-neath the lines of the brush. Your brushwork in general ...von Gaza: I work with layers of paint. Usually, I start with a Venetian ground. A kind of homage to fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian paint-ing. Often, I then place a brilliantly colourful in-termediate layer over that and then paint over it again, with brown, for example. Like everything which is suppressed – in the psychological sense as well – its energy can nonetheless be felt. The

intermediate layers of colour are often comple-mentary to the final layer. For example, a brilliant green as a second layer, covered with a brown layer, will interact energetically with the red of the final layer, with the surface.

Giloy-Hirtz: There are so many differences to dis-cover in the apparent uniformity! But what do you think of while doing it? Of landscape?von Gaza: I have a great love of nature. The grey sky meeting a grey body of water – then I can-not look away. But that’s more because I want to paint an emotion and not the landscape itself. The feeling of oneness I have when I’m in it.

Giloy-Hirtz: So your paintings expression your own personal state?von Gaza: I try to express something larger which has meaning for everyone. And yet it is my energy. Let me tell a little story:

I had tenosynovitis during the preparation for an exhibition, so I asked my assistant to apply the ground for the painting. When he got to the col-oured intermediate layer, I noticed it was not the expression I had imagined. It became clear to me that I could not even define why, but the plane feels different to me. I painted over the paintings in question – they simply did not work.

Over time, I realised that a certain expression can only be produced by the painter’s energy. It is unique. The phenomenon already starts when mixing the paint; it goes beyond the painting of individual layers of colour to the surface, which

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traditionally, too, was, of course, usually painted by the master himself.

Giloy-Hirtz: The surfaces are produced in great concentration, in a meditative process of paint-ing.von Gaza: Yes, really it’s the idea of concentra-tion, repetition and release. Once you have done the same thing over again often enough, a famil-iarity with your own paintings and with the things themselves results. Applying the paint to the can-vas, directly, with detached concentration, has always been a thrill for me. It’s what I like to do most. Delicate, subtle differences which result in the process of painting fascinate me. The process of painting excites me. So the motif is never bor-ing for me. I express through the brushstroke; I try to put everything I can into it.

Giloy-Hirtz: Which of the old masters of the his-tory of Western art have inspired you?von Gaza: I am most fascinated by the power of Cimabue’s works. I have been touched by the light in Bellini’s painting.

Giloy-Hirtz: To whom do you feel an intellectu-al kinship when you think of abstract painting?von Gaza: My encounters with particular works by abstract painters who defined a time are im-portant to me. Again and again, I think about my encounter with works by Rothko in a room in Tate Modern in London.

Giloy-Hirtz: Do you always paint one work at a time?

von Gaza: No, often I conceive my paintings in pairs or in groups. Often I imagine a space in which the finished paintings will hang, as if en-gaged in dialogue. For example, when I paint- ed the Red Veil Master Paintings, I imagined a space in which six large red veils were hanging. They were supposed to communicate – in terms of their surfaces in relation to one another and in terms of the structure of their colour, the var-ious layers of colour – and yet at the same time convey an impression of unity. There is a syner-getic effect. Then they are no longer just six paint-ings but rather an impression of what I wanted to express.

Giloy-Hirtz: It is striking that you finish the rath-er aloof surfaces of the grey series, with their haptic effect of the canvas, with a varnish which reflects the light and almost mirrors the space and the viewer.von Gaza: At first, it was a reduction to the col-our grey which made the form or style even more visible. If you leave something out – in this case, colour – other things become visible. In my later works in colour, I am interested more in the en-ergetic aspect, how various layers of colour in-teract.

Giloy-Hirtz: How did you arrive at this idea of treating colour in this way?von Gaza: It was more a feeling than a thought. Several years ago, I travelled to Assisi, to the Basilica di San Francesco. There, I encountered the painting of Cimabue for the first time. His en-ergy penetrates the subject. It is about so much

more than reproduction. His painting overcomes reproduction and becomes pure expression: en-ergy. I try to do that with colour.

Giloy-Hirtz: You work in series. How did that come about?von Gaza: Always seeming to do the same thing and yet a different expression results. It is the subtle differences. When produced in series, the paintings come into contact with one another. Usually I paint two or more at a time. In series, it becomes possible to perceive the differences in brushstroke or in the different layers of paint. Another dimension results that has an effect even between paintings of different colours – for ex-ample, between the grey and the red works. They form a context which supplements the individu-al works. It is also nice to see the brushwork in the rather aloof-looking grey paintings versus the deep colour of the red paintings. Also, I have a hard time separating myself. Having similar paint-ings consoles me after selling a work. I’m only half joking.

Giloy-Hirtz: The square is your format now, exclusively.von Gaza: Yes, the square is an ideal form. When I paint a square format, I first have to destroy something, namely an ideal dimension. That hap-pens with the first brushstroke. With a rectangle, it is different. Then there is a tendency to pro-duce an ideal proportion, with the aid of the gold-en section, for example. When I paint a square, I destroy the harmony in order to recreate it in the process of painting. That is a different approach.

/ Sylke von Gaza, Petra Giloy-Hirtz /

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I used to work with rectangular formats as well. I find the square more appealing in this context.

Giloy-Hirtz: You studied with Sean Scully. Why did you choose him as a teacher?von Gaza: I first encountered Scully’s work at a show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. The first painting I saw was Durango. I felt like I’d been hit with a right hook. At the same time, I can re-call thinking that anyone that intense is also sen-sitive. Somehow I recognised part of myself in those works.

Giloy-Hirtz: What interested you about the way Scully teaches?von Gaza: I wanted a teacher whose intensity I could rely on. I need resistance. Scully gave something more like psychological lessons than formal instructions. It was about overcoming one’s own psychological limitations. According to the maxim: Know yourself, then you will know what kind of painter you are. He was not always exactly gentle about that.

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/ 2011 /Studio Venice, glass work, Murano

/ 2009 /Inclusion of a »red veil painting« in the collectionof Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany, and completion of cycle of works »purple veil paintings«

/ 2008 /Completion of the cycles of works “grey veil paintings” und “red veil paintings”

/ 2007 /Graduated from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (Academy of the Visual Arts in Munich, Germany) with a degree (Diplom)

/ 2005 /Named a “Meisterschülerin” (master student) of Sean Scully (Meisterschüler is a title awarded to exceptionally talented students who successfully complete a postgraduate masterclass)

/ 2002 - 2006 /Studied painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (Academy of the Visual Arts in Munich, Germany) under Prof. Sean Scully

/ 1966 /Born in Hamburg, Germany as Sylke von Gazen genannt Gaza

CV Sylke von Gaza Exhibitions selected

/ March 2011 / solo exhibition /»Light & Painting« - Palazzo Ca del Duca, Venice, Italy

/ December 2010 /»Annual Art Donations« - Art Society Munich (Kunstverein München e.V.)

/ Juli 2010 /»Basic Colours« - Munich

/ Mai 2009 / solo exhibition /»Malerei« - Galerie Biedermann, Munich

/ Februar 2009 / solo exhibition /»red paintings« - Rich Gallery, London

/ November 2008 /»Künstler der Galerie« - Galerie Biedermann, Munich

/ September 2008 /»Open Art« - Galerie Biedermann, Munich

/ Juli 2008 /Exhibition for the 15th Annual Art Award of the Aichach Art Society (Kunstverein Aichach e.V.)

/ Oktober 2007 /Annual exhibition of the Traunstein Art Society(Kunstverein Traunstein e.V.)

/ Juli 2007 /Exhibition for the 14th Annual Art Award of the Aichach Art Society (Kunstverein Aichach e.V.)

/ Juli 2007 /Graduation exhibition at the Akademie der Bilden-den Künste München (Academy of the Visual Arts in Munich, Germany), class of Sean Scully

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Steven Rich

Rich Gallery111 Mount StreetLondon W1K 2TT, England

Phone +44 207 499 4881Fax +44 207 499 4882

> www.richonline.com

> steven@richonline.com

Galerie BiedermannMunich

Rich GalleryLondon

Dr. Margret Biedermann

Galerie BiedermannMaximilianstraße 2580539 Munich, Germany

Phone +49 (0)89-297 257Fax +49 (0)89-292 237

> www.artnet.com/biedermann.html

> galerie-biedermann@web.de