Irmi Obermeyer - Präsenz

From 29/04/2022 To 03/06/2022

In her painting, Irmi Obermeier is guided by a longing: the longing for the white surface. Instead of completely filling her picture bases, more and more space developed for white spaces in her work. The white space is not nothing. The emptiness leaves room to breathe, room to develop. The white takes its full presence.

The white space as a design element requires courage. In art we know the term “horror vacui”, the fear of the void, in relation to the opulence of Victorian or Baroque artworks and architecture. In the 20th century, an opposite pole developed in modern art. Not least with the aesthetics of the Bauhaus came the courage to open spaces. The white suddenly came to the fore.

For Irmi Obermeyer, white forms the basis of every work. Before you can start painting, the picture carrier must be primed. The fact that they are smooth and neutral in the end requires careful and time-consuming preparation. This preparation is very important for Irmi Obermeier. The primer is not just preliminary work, but already part of your artistic expression. The white does not remain the background, it becomes an equal opponent of the rest of the colour.

The artist finds inspiration for her motifs in her environment. Sometimes it is fabrics, special folds, bodies, sculptures or distortions in nature. These real things, or rather the subjective perception of what is seen, become the transporter. The painting translates the original into its own script using abbreviations.

In her painting, the Allgäu painter uses only brushes and oil paint. In some cases, the paint is mixed with pigments in iridescent shades in order to lead the two-dimensional painting into an illusion of plasticity and thus make it appear three-dimensional. Achieving this goal requires absolute presence and attention. It is this presence in the painting process that runs through the artist’s work. Instead of impulsive moments, it is precise preparation and precise technique that the painter uses for her works. The selection and quantity of shades, the brushes, the bases, all this must be prepared at the beginning of the painting. No hesitation or dilatoriness should interrupt the flow of the painting, because corrections are hardly possible.
Everything is visible, everything is present.