Cristina Fessler: BUDAPEST 2004. MA(E)LSRTOM

Cristina Fessler spent 6 months in Hungary on a stipend of the Collegium Budapest with the support of the Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr. The Swiss artist presents her latest works, produced in Budapest, at the Dorottya Gallery. Despite the change in material and technique, these paintings of refined sensitivity yet powerful expression, building one upon the other, may be viewed as a continuation of her earlier works, so-called "layers", which were earth-based installations and multilayered expressive canvases, "painted" with tar and sand. In her new works (Ma(e)lstrom series), as well, Cristina Fessler investigates the limits of painting. The place of creation - in this case, the atelier of the Collegium Budapest - is of key importance at the moment of creation of the artworks. During the course of concentrated, meditative creative ritual, artistic intervention functions as a catalyst in the process of moulding itself. Fluid paint is poured or painted onto the light, semi-transparent material, which flows, setting out from the discovered centrepoint, seeking its path on the surface of the picture, all the way until the coiling river of paint comes to rest, and terminates - as a light, transparent trace - where it began. Individual pictures are here and there placed on the walls, arranged in new constellations. The visibly infinitely moving flood obliterates the limits of the space.