CHRISTA NÄHER

CHRISTA NÄHER
paints pictures. Her paintings and drawings fall back on the historical and self-witnessed past which they transfer into the present. The artist, who was born and raised in Lindau on Lake Constance, in the course of her career has developed her very own version of baroque imagery, an imagery that combines form and vision in a congenial way. The ambivalence of the living thing, the polarity of light vs. darkness are recurring features and lend a unique quality to her works. Näher's most recently created 'castrati portraits' (Kastratenbilder) hover at the border between substantiality and in-substantiality. They seem to have risen out of an uncertain past in order to reflect on present-day reality and of course on the conditions of artistic production in our own time. Which they come to do as the irritating 'artificial figures' (Kunstfiguren) they are. For her exhibitions in Innsbruck and Frankfurt Christa Näher has created numerous works which once more re-formulate some of the central topics of her career. Well-known motives and forms reappear in the context of the new media. Thus for example Castle Wolfegg near Lindau became the subject of the artists first cinematic creation. Drawing on a private relationship to the locality spanning over more than 30 years 'Nachgesang' interweaves moods and emotions with the specific topography of the place. The colourful history of the 15th century castle serves as the starting point for a very personal journey into the past.    

Christa Näher, born in 1947 in Lindau, has been teaching at the Städel School in Frankfurt since 1987. She lives and works in Cologne and the village of Wolfegg.

curator: Nicolaus Schafhausen, Frankfurt