Location
Brunnenstr. 22, 10119 Berlin

Dates
March 9 – April 2, 2023

 

as a seed as a vision originates from each of Sara Rossi’s five paintings that start with a small detail and grow organically, much like a plant or flower. The vision references the act of seeing that she associates with memories and thoughts of the past, present and future. Her poetic, abstract paintings are visual responses to written verses that Rossi has spent time constructing over many years.

Writing and philosophical thinking have played an important role in the development of her artistic practice: Before studying at the famed Städelschule in Frankfurt and the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, she graduated with a master’s degree from the Università degli Studi di Trieste in anthropology and speech philosophy, focusing on ways to convey female identity in writing. In her work, Rossi has stated that she is, “[...] less concerned with what we see than with how we see, how we register, how we half remember and half forgot, with the way we associate and combine observations and thoughts [...]”.

Two of the paintings on view are realised on wooden boxes, allowing the viewer to experience the three dimensionality of each work’s painted surface. One of the works features material Rossi often employs, aluminium foil, cutting vertically down the picture plane. The other, Untitled (2023) depicts an abstracted interior space, whereby these pictorial responses are generated by varying emotional states – much like a photograph of a mental process or a meditation that has been transferred through the hand onto the work.
Sara Rossi explores minimal forms with distinct recognizable meaning, which as she says are both open to interpretation and mysterious at the same time. Preferring smaller formats in which to paint, she see’s paintings as tools – tools for a type of thinking, seeing and exploring.

In Untitled (2022), Rossi paints a lusciously surreal, dream-like abstract landscape at night. She speaks about her interest in the spiritual (and mystical) use of gold in art history and the phenomenological quality of the colour itself – also highlighted again in an earlier work, Untitled (2020). Her belief that gold has a capacity of being a kind of ‘non colour’, more neutral than the white pigment ever can be, yet capable of nullifying the third dimensionality of a painting is a recurring theme in this collection of paintings. The distinction between foreground and background of the gold pigment, opens up a dimension that fascinates both artist and the viewer.

By employing simplified organic shapes and forms, she challenges the viewer’s rational comprehension, and instils her works with a transcendental dimension, aided by the use of surreal golden surfaces. The resulting images are elemental: remaining open to interpretation, offering a space between the viewer and painting – where the allegory becomes a ritual.