Observaitons on the work

Introduction and Observations on the Work

(drafted by Mandy Gnägi, art historian, presentation/editorial work)

Christine Huber-Wegmann works with the classic means of art creating something new and her very own. That's not all though. Her oeuvre appears to be the work of a dervish, a mediator between the obvious and the worldly and the obscure and the spiritual. There is much that is not what it seems to be at first glance. Perceiving her art does not inevitably mean experiencing it. Behind the works there is much more hidden than we believe to recognize when first looking at them as primarily rational beings. Dealing with it too quickly, would not do justice to her artistic intentions. In the group of works showing fragments of tulips and birches, the artist oriented herself by quite concrete forms. Similarly to a close-up picture in photography, we see fragments of certain parts reminding us more or less of plants we are familiar with in everyday life.

The frame offered by the artist, already indicates focusing and thus a certain degree of abstraction inviting us to linger while confusing at the same time. What is the artist's intention choosing this fragment if not to express a plant in its entire concrete and natural form still recognizable nonetheless?

Christine Huber-Wegmann condenses. She indicates something that both underlies the object of her works and defines it. Thus, it is in the detail the manifold entirety discloses itself. The depiction of a recognizable surface is the key to where our thoughts are supposed to strive to. The tulip is a fragile, delicate plant, known since ancient times, originating from North Africa, mentioned as "Rose of Sharon" in the Bible. A member of the lily family whose splendor of blossoms and colors emerge from a much less beautiful bulb with leaves reminding of wax, displaying a new layer with every step of its development. These layers include both growth and decay in the process of being just as Christine Huber-Wegmann pursued these layers in a very direct way. This painting was created only by adding numerous layers and coatings. And though much of this cannot be seen anymore, it oscillates, it resonates and it reveals itself by lingering in front of the painting.

The same procedure was applied to the works showing fragments of a birch. This tree is known for its rapid growth as well as for its multicolored bark permanently peeling off, cracking and thus always displaying something of its inwards.

Furthermore, with its dangling racemes, this tree combines the masculine and the feminine in its stem. Christine Huber-Wegmann chose a specific fragment which becomes a symbol of itself, its story, its beginning und its end alike. The layers of acrylic paint and the different materials of the coating suggest a more substantial depth than could possibly be revealed by the material itself. This is about the momentum of the energy of creation, an inherent bond of all of life, about the coexistence of turmoil and peace, about the same source of man and woman, their togetherness as well as their clear disparity.

For Christine Huber-Wegmann, connecting is an essential momentum both on a substantial and a technical level. Technically refined especially by trainings with Renate Moser, she applies photography on the priming, layers of color, wax and other coating material, gold leaf, colored pencils without prioritizing but continuing to coat as long as her intuition tells her to and until she can let go. On a substantial level, in her works, the artist combines alleged opposites in entirely different ways. Behind the structure and display of the surface, the complexity of all of existence is hidden. Therefore, what we first absorb with our visual senses, has to be examined several times in order to rise to a higher level of significance.

This is equally true for the works in which she chooses the path of abstraction even more. Here, colors and shapes lead the way, give even more room for your own access, defined by the application of the paint, the stroke of the brush or the palette knife, by the coexistence of rest and movement, by the layers of material and the format.

And just as the dervish appears to be a mediator with his initially slow, circling movements, with his increasingly faster pinwheeling as the center in the present moment offering internalization, so it seems in Christine Huber-Wegmann's works that all of this has already been executed however not completed yet. They reveal and veil, give depth where the material is actually limited, let the mind circle ceaselessly finding its own way of connecting. After all: fortunately, things are not always what they seem to be at first glance.

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