Ideale

Temperaments, characters, types – by choosing the title Ideale (Ideals) for the exhibition of her latest works, Britta Lumer evokes a tradition in social criticism that has illuminated the interaction among observation, judgment, and categorization since time immemorial. Lumer shows large-format full-body portraits, executed as ink paintings using watercolor technique. In this context, “ideals” belong in the world of politics of the body. This form of politics establishes a contemporary form of public view of the private and personal that people cannot escape at will. Lumer’s field of exploration through painting can be situated by stating that the body does not exist simply for itself. Instead, our perceptions of our own bodies and those of others – as the social creatures we are – are prepared, overlaid, and at the same time “formatted” through visual practices across a host of media and everyday situations.

Lumer’s explorative method represents the gradual unpacking of the specific contemporary public nature of the body as public display. In counterpoint to the endless reproduction of depictions of the self and others that are only possible in the first place because they are expressed in stereotypes, what Lumer works toward in her large-format ink paintings is a depiction, unique in contemporary art, of overlays from multiple perspectives. Paradoxically, they are themselves reminiscent of complex techniques used in analog photography in particular, of multiple exposure, negative exposure, up to and including diagnostic X-ray images. In this way, she opens up both the process of painting and our own perceptions toward more radical possibilities in form. They are radical in the sense that, when we view them, they inevitably confront us with the question of the roots and justifications for our own perceptions and judgments about each other.

Lumer’s ongoing exploration and refinement of these methods, often involving highly complex arrangements, from striking portraits (of faces) to life-size full-body portraits, both enlarges the view while also sharpening the dimensions of the picture, much as going from a city map to a map of a larger area can do, opening up new orientations.

Britta Lumer (born in Frankfurt am Main in 1965) lives and works in Berlin. Tying in with the contemporary aspect of art is important to her, and it draws on various factors, not least among them her experiences with contrasting ways of life: studies in Bergen, Norway, and Frankfurt (Städel) with Georg Herold, Per Kirkeby, Luc Tuymans, Lawrence Weiner; studio in New York, instructor at ESMOD Berlin; numerous individual and group exhibitions, works and purchases in international collections.