26.04. – 11.05.2019

Preview Thursday 25.04.2019 from 6pm

RAUMX is starting 2019 with two artists who will show recent works on paper. London based Katrina Blannin will show prints and German Volker Saul is showing his paper cuts.

Cut, painted and layered paper

The designs for the paper cuts come about as freehand drawings on standard DIN A4 pages. Using a fineliner pen, I draw lines that come together as form, with no preliminary draft, planning or correction; ideas for forms develop during the drawing act as an individual form or as a sequence of several forms on the page. A selection of these configurations is transferred by projection to larger pages and then cut out using a scalpel. For further treatment I use both what has been cut out and the surface from which the cut has been made.

The paper cuts constitute the raw material for the subsequent painterly processes, for which I leave sufficient room for chance. I work on the front and reverse sides with color. Most often, it is possible to use both sides. In addition to the cuts, I paint uncut papers; later, these serve as backgrounds.

All of these papers enter the pool for the assignings I ultimately carry out. Strata are built up in layers of two to five cuts, each layer being a picture element of equal value – regardless of what or how much of it will be visible in the finished work. The picture elements have come about independently of one another. There is no hierarchy. The compilations may be changed during each phase of work.

Thus, the assignments take place throughout the entire time the series is developed, in a long process of trying out, checking, discarding, and reassigning. As it originates, the series forms a body of individual parts that may be flexibly combined. In a final step, I affix the layers to one another. The open process has been halted. As a result, each finished work is precisely whatever it is. But everything could also be very different.

Volker Saul, Cologne in August 2018

“The process of experimenting with simple systems, as well as palindromic and isochromatic structures, aims to produce paintings with a logical clarity; both spatial and material in character. Methodologies for reading historical paintings are re-examined and transformed into new visual investigations which in turn ask questions about the concrete and constructivism in art; reflexively generating new modes of apprehension.”

Katrina Blannin is an artist based in London. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1997 and has since then shown her work extensively in the UK and abroad; co-directed artist run project spaces; curated exhibitions and written about contemporary painting. She is currently undertaking a practice based Painting PhD at the University of Worcester, teaches at Camberwell UAL  and Canterbury UCA and and works for the editorial board and the mentoring programme for Turps Banana, London, UK.