Past exhibition
Tatjana Valsang – Riverbanks
16.04.2023 – 11.06.2023
Tatjana Valsang (born 1963 in St. Tönis) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Klaus Rinke and Dieter Krieg and then worked for a long time without public presentations. During this time she developed her own artistic language. Her paintings show biomorphic structures, which she stages in a complex interplay of colour, form and pictorial space and she is able to emphasise the luminosity of each colour value. Her lines create fascinating rhythmic structures in which energetic dynamics point to something processual that is inherent in nature.
“Paint is for me not only important as colour but also as a substance. It gives me the possibility to use natural laws and universal principles that determine my colours, forms, structures and compositions. I see my paintings as natural phenomena.”
Valsang lays her canvases on the floor so that the paint can flow. The interplay of brushstrokes, gravity and natural processes creates the painter’s signature colour gradients. The gauzy layers of paint of her wet-on-wet technique sometimes resemble watercolour paintings.
“Sometimes it is like a treasure hunt of my own making – and I am surprised myself about what remains on the canvas, delicate like nature, apparently accidental – but ultimately the result of conceptual preparations and years of experience.”
The titles of her works, which are always given after completion, refer to situational: TAGSÜBER (2010), OSTWIND (2012), MOMENT (2017), to landscape formations: KLAMM (2014), RAUMEBENEN (2011), ARCHIPEL (2012), HANG (2015), SANDBANK (2017), RIVERBANKS (2022), to colours: INDISCHROSA (2009), KONGOGRÜN (2009), DOKKAGELB (2015), ASHIYABLAU (2019) and CAPRIBLAU (2004).
One is reminded not only of action painting by Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) but also of the colour field painting of Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011). Valsang manages to follow her own artistic path in this tradition, oscillating between real and surreal, concepts and abstraction, nature and sensation.
We thank the Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. for their kind support.
Tatjana Valsang: “Taj Mahal”, 2010, Acrylfarbe auf Leinwand, 170 x 220 cm © Tatjana Valsang 2023.