The Blechschmidts

Married couple of artists from the Vogtland area create "Traces of light and life"

01.08.2003 - 30.09.2003

The current double exhibition of the married artists from the Vogtland, Regina and Wolfgang Blechschmidt, in the LAUDA FabrikGalerie uses abstract styles to refer to topical subjects. The two artists process the subject of light with various means. With Regina Blechschmidt, we find light in the depth of space. A staggered network of lines blocks access for us. We suspect light in the infinite. With Wolfgang Blechschmidt, light is found on the surface. Small and miniature structures absorb light and reflect it. The artists have many things in common. Nevertheless, their ways of expressing themselves are individual. One striking thing is the aesthetics, a strong reticence as far as colours and contrasts are concerned, which also extends to the choice of the frames. Each motif demands a specific frame - a special point to which little attention is frequently paid and which is handled perfectly and fortunately in this exhibition. Wolfgang Blechschmidt has a weakness for tender colours. A warm, elegant grey dominates - mainly increased to white. With one single exception, the picture "War". This is an extremely portrait format in the colours yellow via orange, red down to an impressive rust red. It starts with a homogeneous yellow surface quiescent in itself, which has a nuance of darker yellow in the upper area with two superimposed, rectangular shapes. Above it, there follows the sulphur-yellow centre. It is like the core of an explosion, everything pushes to the outside. Above this, threatening, uncanny, ominous, a mushroom cloud, which bursts open the format in the upper area. Wolfgang Blechschmidt's further search for traces of life can be seen every day on old facades of houses. Normally, these survivors of the former time are intentionally regarded as being eyesores in our environment, which is becoming more and more beautiful, and are re-plastered. Blechschmidt now draws our attention to their aesthetic richness: whole generations have left their traces. These layers, which he uncovers as if with a scalpel, are then moved back into our consciousness. But he does not preserve residues of plaster and masonry and present them to us in a frame, he reproduces the situation, rediscovers the structures and achieves an abstract realism in this way. With Regina Blechschmidt, sacral elements such as church portals, glass windows or monastery paths find their way into her pictures. The cross as the symbol of suffering appears in a number of versions. It mainly appears light yellow in the symmetrical middle. Darkness is more in the peripheral zones of the picture, superposed by a number of lines. These structures have been formulated with extreme vehemence. We feel the tempo, the force and the passion in these lines. They have an inner tension, because they are mainly anti-cyclical. They hit each other at an angle of 90 degrees, thus again forming many more crosses. Her plastics also show the interrelationship between light and shadow. Sacral subjects as well as human emotions are implemented here in an abstract way. The observer of the "Madonna", for example, feels the security of the spread coat, but at the same time one feels a great loneliness. The winding paths of the ceramics "Bindings" give an idea of battle and harmony. The pain of the tormented "King" becomes visible when you look at the picture. The married artists, who were born in Falkenstein in the Vogtland and also now live there again, have had a varied past. Regina Blechschmidt was active as a designer at the Plauen state-owned company as a trained textile artist and studied "Applied Art” in Schneeberg. After moving to Baden-Württemberg in 1989, she taught at the Juveniles' Art School in Offenburg. After opening her own ceramic workshop in Falkenstein in 1997, she has been working freelance for three years. Wolfgang Blechschmidt has been concerning himself with painting and graphics since 1963. He has been a freelance artist since 1982 and completed studies at the Dresden University of Fine Arts. After the move to Baden-Württemberg, he was a teacher at Juveniles' Art School in Offenburg and at Offenburg Adult Education Institute in the area of Painting and Graphics for Adults. Despite the change of residence to Falkenstein in 1998, he has remained at the Art School in Offenburg as a teacher in the area of Painting and Graphics. Those interested in art can gain an impression of the artists' work at the LAUDA FabrikGalerie during business hours until the end of September 2003.

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