Alexander Wertheim: September Paintings

7.-9.10.2022, Berlin

Like shiny, patterned grease marks on your unilluminated smartphone screen, you are looking at the vestiges of a physical presence. The September Paintings are weave- like but jagged, colorful gestures sprayed on canvas. The change between bright and muted tones evokes the effect of refracted sunlight: cheerful, organic and cohesive at first glance, they readily reveal their disquietude to the viewer. Made without direct contact with the canvas, an eerie quality emerges. The distance between the gesture and its trace comes to the fore. Cohabitation of disparate elements is represented in a singular image oscillating between turbid and clear, reminiscent of the always- incomplete recollection of an encounter. Systems of interrelation muddle when interrogated, patterns repeatedly form and break. As they narrate the struggle of a structure against its own disintegration, these paintings function as portraits of interiority, enunciating a series of explorations of a bearable amount of disorder.

– Anna Thieser