(The) New Works, 2021
Kim? Gallery
July 14 – September 12, 2021

The image/prototype that permeates Sabīne Vernere’s works stands for a direct and illustrative fixation of personal/intimate experience. Thinking about this situation/act and the relations included therein, the author labors to a point where the images recede from the subjective sphere and, as part of a process of creating generalizations/connections, boundaries are blurred between she, he and it. Expectation, desire and torment are both radically subjective and experienced personally, as well as ‘normalized’ and appropriated by all. Feeling images inside herself, and living the images arising from the specific situation – the sea at night, working on one’s knees at the studio, losing oneself in dating apps, the literature of ‘mind expansion’ – the author starts depicting the way it is running, fleeing and sitting. 

In the most recent series, informed by loneliness, the pandemic and the art residency in Paris, the image is shifting, embodying ‘strength charms’ and ‘incrusted landscapes of memory’. Working, at length and systematically, Vernere wields control over the material, coaxes it, so that ink transforms or embodies flesh, landscape, emotion, you name it. The flow of ink has been brought across directly from processes of nature, such as a river emptying itself into the sea, spring waters mixing with the soil (‘… it’s hard to explain, but the way a fir tree grows and the way ink flows seem the same to me’) and so forth. As the days are spent losing oneself in front of the screen (‘… down on my knees in front of a sheet of paper, feverishly checking my phone, expecting who knows what while I’m waiting for the ink to dry’), the fluid landscapes become solid, forms turn angularly mechanical and compositions central. At the same time, there’s a growing need for shelter. These new works – an affirmation of celebrating everyday intimacy – serve as an allegory of the shackles of life and the infrastructure of the mind, artificial and oppressive frameworks, the very solidity of which (like layers of color, paintings that have ‘blossomed’ on the metal-imitation background covered with cotton paper) is/must be overcome.