Works by Annett Beier, Anett Schuster and Robert Dörfler can be seen in the Göltzschtalgalerie Auerbach – using traditional techniques and yet with surprising results.
Artistically, Annett Beier, Anett Schuster and Robert Dörfler are self-taught. The results of their work – which can now be seen in the Göltzschtalgalerie in the beautiful Nikolaikirche in Auerbach in the Vogtland – are thoroughly professional and testify to talent and a sense of a distinctive artistic signature.
Typewriter art, filigree drawings and cautiously expressive painting form an exciting triad under the title “stroke – line – surface”. Annett Beier takes care of the “area”. Born in 1980, she has professional qualifications as a carpenter and media designer, the latter is also her current job. Her paintings are restrained studies of people and landscapes in rather restrained, muted colors. Empathetically, with carefully but powerfully set accents and echoes of Expressionism, she captures the essence of nature as it changes over the course of the seasons, for example on an old “slab road” between forest and fields, tells life stories, for example in the simple “Mountain Farmer’s Life” , in which an angular face and strong, restless hands dominate. A person who corresponds with the barren, unspectacular and yet beautiful landscapes that Annett Beier paints.
The finest strokes add up to the portrait
The fine drawings by Anett Schuster are about beauty and danger. Born in Schlema in 1981, she worked in Chemnitz after studying in Mittweida, which she completed with a degree in real estate management. Her drawings, mostly in pure black and white, sometimes supplemented by a signal red, are of great, sometimes astonishing clarity and yet, or precisely because of this, hold a secret. Countless finest strokes combine to form impressive portraits, such as “Eva with Snake” or “Penthos – Spirit of Mourning, Lamentation and Despair” – the double portrait of an older woman who is obviously mourning the death of a younger woman. The hunting scene “Run, Hunter, Run”, which allows the animals to gain the upper hand in the forest, is unusual and picturesque. The small series on “Vogels Tod” is downright shocking, as it returns the deceased creature to nature and lets it merge into it.
Art carved into the keys
Robert Dörfler is sure to strike the most unusual notes in this triad. Literally. He “paints” his pictures on paper with old typewriters by pounding letters, but mostly symbols like “%”, plus and minus, brackets, hyphens and dashes, dots next to and on top of each other in the keys and thus in the paper, whereby he can move the latter steplessly back and forth using the roller. Images of buildings and landscapes, but also portraits and sometimes image-text collages emerge from countless, often barely recognizable signs. Robert Dörfler, born in 1986, works in Chemnitz as a system administrator. His typewriter art – which has nothing to do with the poetic language images of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt or the typewriter experiments of Carlfriedrich Claus – was inspired by the British artist Keira Rathbone, who also tours with her typewriters. The American Paul Smith, who created pictures with typewriters as early as the 1940s, is considered the inventor of this type of art. Robert Dörfler also describes his artistic work as a balance to his actual bread and butter: “During the day I live as an IT system administrator in the digital world of zeros and ones, but after work I switch to analogue. I help to form letters, numbers and punctuation marks complex images on my typewriter and the tension increases with every keystroke, because unlike working on a computer, mistakes can only be eliminated with Tipp-Ex.”
As imaginative technical gimmicks, the images sometimes refer to current politics, such as in “The fearless girl and the Twormp”, in which a girl confronts the screaming Donald Trump, or to art history, as in “The last type-in”, reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper”.
The exhibition “Schlag – Strich – Flache” with works by Annett Beier, Anett Schuster and Robert Dörfler in the Göltzschtalgalerie Auerbach/Vogtland, Alte Rodewischer Straße 2, can be seen until June 24th. Open Wednesday to Friday 11am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday 2pm to 6pm.