›Alpirism reloaded‹ 21/01/2022—17/03/2022

• Katrin Kampmann

Frankfurt 21/01/2022—17/03/2022

In the intoxication of the mountain air, amidst the shimmering alpine flora, bright colors flow together in ecstasy. Bewitched by the gentle charm of the mountains, hikers set out in search of the next delight. High up, where edelweiss and fly agarics enchant us, we feed on the power of the alpine landscape.

The exhibition title ›Alpirismus‹ hints at the special way in which the artist Katrin Kampmann approaches the mountain world in her works.

The energies that can be triggered by looking at and experiencing the mountains are reflected in sensual yet strong colors. Through a clever neologism from ›alpinism‹ and ›vampirism‹ - which is not to be understood as bloodlust, but as mountain intoxication - the exhibition title Alpirism stands for a gain in strength, for being transported and for overcoming problems and everyday worries through self-forgetfulness.

While the artist allows liquid paint to flow into her canvases and papers during the production process, pouring them onto the picture surface in flowing streams, we follow the gentle and moving color paths when looking at the sensual works. In a symbiosis of chance and control, Katrin Kampmann directs her color streams into certain paths, giving them directions from which shapes and surfaces crystallize into objective motifs. The figurative moments arise in a balanced dualism of abstraction and figuration, which the artist develops into her own formal language and which runs through her entire work. Her painterly creations repeatedly play with traditional genres and well-known pictorial subjects.

In the works presented here, she focuses on landscape painting, which she has increasingly turned to and revitalized since a performative hike along the Berliner Höhenweg in the Zillertal and since an artist residency in Bad Gastein, Austria. Massive mountain ranges, snow-covered peaks, hills and valleys pour before our eyes in the dynamics of the flowing streams of color, offering us a balanced combination of realistic mountain scenery and otherworldly color combinations that have sprung from the artist's imagination.

With the help of her works, Katrin Kampmann also knows how to stimulate our own imagination by offering us figurative clues that we can discover for ourselves when we look at them, complete them in our mind's eye and understand them. When we look at the candy-colored mountain worlds, we immerse ourselves in ecstatic and new feelings.

Installation views: Credits Eric Tschernow