Kunstkatalog Stefanie Brehm

12 links / left: column mandarin garnet, 2018 160 x 45,5 cm/ 63 x 18 in rechts / right: column royal blue, 2018 129,5 x 34 cm/ 51 x 13,4 in On the bliss of colour on columns, or how Stefanie Brehm breathes life into basic forms Prof. Dr. Johannes Kirschenmann as in a game of chess, what counts is the next best move. The artist is engaged in a stream of decisions and reactions as she aims to create tensions with the ultimately aim of striking a balance. Compared to the large ceramic pieces, the polyurethane works pos- sess the charm of being easy to produce with negli- gible risk. However, polyurethanes also demand the same concentration and clarity to realise the artist’s colour-form ideas. Coloured liquid polyurethane, ap- plied to a coated plate with pouring vessels and spray- ers, forms the basis for these paintings. From a certain point onwards, when the chemical curing process begins, the artist has to take decisions and work very fast. She discovered this kind of painting while trying to create a sculpture consisting of multiple layers of plastic. However, she stopped at the first step; taking in the potential of the first thin layer, she abandoned her original idea and following her intuition, combi- ning the polyurethane with painting instead. In her polyurethane works, Stefanie Brehm carries over her original painting technique (oil on canvas) to a new material and expands on it. As with the cera- mics, she is enthralled by the brilliance and luminosi- ty that the medium lends the colour. She identifies a great, initially unanticipated, similarity between the two materials. Both captivate the observer with their shining surfaces, whose colours appear to vibrate. Both materials tempt the observer to touch them. The polyurethane sometimes looks like glass, some colours are transparent, others opaque, just like the glaze. The material offers a wide palette of colours including neon shades that are not possible in cera- mics. The polyurethane also enables the colour to be self-supporting, without a conventional substrate. The colour gradient blends into the wall architecture of a room, allowing the artist to create references between the polyurethane works on the wall and the ceramics in the room at her exhibitions. They are obviously related. The large plait Stefanie Brehm attached to the neo-classicist façade was not meant to direct us into the studio of a versatile artist, but to bring a young artist out of it, for her to experiment with material and fathom the extremes of form. In a skilful game of colour, she spirits the observer into a magical realm of art that inspires a spontaneous blissful thrill. Always new, always different.