MONIKA BAER
INVISIBLE WORK
— Because my paintings often seem so extremely far apart from each other and of such different types, I think a lot about the way they are connected. Actually I see them as the visible parts of a larger invisible work. They’re the elements facing both outwards and inwards.
In this drawing above, from 2007, my paintings are represented by the small rectangles. The paintings function as panels, faces, signals, eyes, entrances and exits; surfaces layered with information. They are attuned to one another. When I made this drawing I was thinking about this space as a ‘body’ of work and how the paintings were kind of scouts; roaming in the dark and expanding their territory, therefore the title Vampires, Thieves and Poachers. Then burrow-like, it has now transformed into a kind of crystalline formation. Experiment, experience, drifting, the processes that surround, and sometimes lead, to a painting are the dynamics that are at work. The paintings, in correspondence with each other and in opposition to one another, structure this invisible architecture.
UNTITLED, 2010, 50×70 cm, oil on canvas
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Monika Baer was born in 1964 in Freiburg, Germany. She lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (2009); Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich (2009); and Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2008); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2006). In 2005 a retrospective of her paintings, collages and drawings was organized by the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht and In 2007 her work was featured in documenta 12.