›Family & Friends: Incarnat‹ 06/01/2023—04/02/2023

• Robert Ritter
• Stefanie Scheurell

Frankfurt 06/01/2023—04/02/2023

In our Frankfurt exhibition series ›Family&Friends‹ we are showing artistic positions that are not part of our gallery program for the second time. For four weeks we welcome our friends as guests and give them the opportunity to exhibit in our gallery spaces.

Robert Ritter and Stefanie Scheurell completed their studies at the State Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe. Both live and work in Konstanz. After their duo show in the Konstanz District Office, which was realized by the Konstanz District Art Foundation, we are showing the works of the artist and the artist now in a new dialogue.

Robert Ritter can be described as a master of materiality, who knows how to use color in the form of high reliefs: countless layers of color are laid thickly on top of each other, thus achieving haptic moments of real objectivity, while the last of these layers of color serves as a canvas for the final motif. In this way, Robert Ritter draws a line from purely representational art, which seems figurative in the style of the tattoo cult, to traditional maritime portraits, to the pure texture and material properties of the color. The canvas as the carrier of the respective motif sometimes becomes the base of the work itself, or is destroyed or reduced to such an extent that it is only recognizable as a net-like weave structure.

Stefanie Scheurell's works defy a socially imposed and anchored ideal image of female beauty. The artist fights against a systemic consensus conveyed by the cosmetics and fashion industries, she alienates both posters and magazines and thus counteracts forced superficiality. Advertising material is destroyed, cut up, removed and modified. Stefanie Scheurell allows a look into the depths that reveals new values ​​and guiding principles. In doing so, she works with different themes that move between nature, physicality, transience and self-portraiture. Sandpaper and scalpel are among the tools she uses to tackle the paper, expose it to water and sun and thus create new representations of the human body.
Her series of chicory ceramics, which has become a permanent cross-media project for the artist, also refers directly to people and is in direct connection with the people portrayed.