Michelle Jezierski - Verge
Images of the Exhibition
Photo: Marcus Schneider
Curated by Christine Nippe
The Berlin-based American artist Michelle Jezierski, born in 1981, is showing paintings in her solo exhibition, questioning space and our perception of it. Curated by Christine Nippe, the show features landscapes interspersed with abstract elements, which are often vaulted by an expressive sky with fragments of clouds. For the most part, the depictions of nature with their special coloration are interspersed with geometric forms that create dynamism, depth and rhythm. These elements create a simultaneous space.
A central component of Jezierski's paintings is light: muted and bright colors as well as light and dark contrasts meet atmospherically and create a shimmering aura all of their own.
At the same time, Jezierski goes back to the actual question of abstraction. She is thus more interested in showing the vastness, depth and monumentality of a space than in depicting a concrete landscape. With the help of abstract elements, cuts and shifts, she disturbs their and our memory and experience of a specific place and allows us to enter a space of the in-between of abstraction and figuration.
Thus, layers of color such as rock structures, waves and clouds pile up in her pictorial spaces and yet are repeatedly disturbed by abstract hatching, squares and structures. Her play with figuration and abstraction takes place in a zone of in-between.
It is precisely this tipping point - known as the verge - that interests the artist. How many figurative points of reference, such as the sky or cloud towers, does it take to convey a feeling of vastness? Or when does abstraction dominate over figuration with cuts and shifts? Michelle Jezierski invites viewers to embark on this experiment in perception and uses her painting to question our sensory impressions.
Michelle Jezierski comes from a family of musicians. At the age of 17, she decided to become a visual artist. She began studying at the Berlin University of the Arts under the renowned sculpture professor Tony Cragg. Cragg's influence is that she learns a lot about dealing with space during this time. This was followed by a scholarship at the Cooper Union in New York with Amy Sillman. She finally completed her studies under Valérie Favre and has lived in Berlin ever since. Jezierski has received scholarships from the Stiftung Kunstfonds and NICA. Her works are in international collections. Her works have been shown at the Kunsthalle Dessau, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Kunsthalle Emden, among others.
A publication will accompany the exhibition.