May 31 - July 6, 2001

Eva Schlegel

New Works

Margarete Roeder Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Eva Schlegel from May 31 through July 6, 2001. A reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, May 31, from 6-8 PM. The exhibition will consist of new works in various media, but all photographic in origin. The images are of clouds, portraits of women, and of Cuba. The works vary from the intimate scale of some portraits, not much larger than a book page, to the grand scale of the cloudscapes. The works are produced photographically, always originating with a photo that Schlegel has taken herself. By photographic and manual means, including photography, xerox, painting, and enlargement, these technically complex images are brought into being. Initially the photo is enlarged xerographically, the larger works in sectional grids, then with a solvent the image is transferred to one of a number of grounds, as varied as chalk-ground on panel, glass, plexiglass or lead sheet. The image is then covered with up to twenty layers of subtly pigmented lacquer and oil, creating a discrete second layer that the eye can read through. The images achieve a depth that appears almost palpable as the viewer seeks to read into, rather than across, the images. The resultant object achieves an almost sculptural sensibility, as the viewer senses the literal weight of the images. The calm reverie of these images produces a deep silence. But Schlegel does not merely mean to seduce or mimic other media with these lush images: the edges of the individual sheets that compose the larger works are deliberately left visible. Rather what we are looking at is a fractured amalgam between collage, painting and photography. Painting, especially plein-air, is clearly a reference that Schlegel elucidates in her works but rather than simply reproducing the world around her she seeks to re-order it. Familiar as we all are with the world of endlessly reproduced photographs, Schlegel will not pin down her images to a single generative idiom. Never neglecting the precise formal aesthetic she brings to her everyday images, a domestic scene, a landscape, a cloudscape or a nude, it is in precisely this area of received visual information that she situates herself. Schlegel enables us to see again, not an image-which could only be an image of the world-but rather the world of images. Eva Schlegel was born in Hall in Tirol, Austria, in 1960. She lives and works in Vienna. Her work has been extensively exhibited at galleries and museums in Europe, the Sydney Biennial and the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Neue Galerie Joanneum, Graz, the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, and the Museum für Lackkunst, Münster.       For further information and photographs, please contact the gallery. TOP ©2001 MARGARETE ROEDER GALLERY 545 BROADWAY FOURTH FLOOR NEW YORK CITY