Descrizione Opera / Biografia
Artwork description:
At the beginning there is always a subject matter but it often changes during the working process. Sometimes you can still see an idea of a landscape or a figure in my paintings yet only vaguely suggested and it is always very simplified and fragmented. Usually each project consists of multiple works, a series of paintings as the outcome of trying out different approaches and perspectives. Most recently I am experimenting with nuances of the color black. Black is not Black. Due to the altering light, the varying components and hues of my black color mixture and the specific way of applying glazes there is always a different perception of the black image.
I apply thin oil point in blurring interfere layers of color and glazing techniques to build up the pictorial space. Monitoring closely what happens on the surface I let the traces of liquid paint run randomly over the canvas.
For me the process of creating is an exciting interaction of idea and material, conception and coincidence, consciously set elements and the at times unanticipated effects of the material per se.
Bio:
German artist Elke Reis has been connected to art throughout her life. As a child she was stunned by the drawings of her father. Growing up in a poor family under miserable circumstances during the last years of World War II he couldn’t even consider pursuing an art career. But his love and talent for drawing influenced the artist’s life more than she would have thought.
For a long time Elke was busy with her family and enjoyed her job as a teacher. Still, her deep passion for art never diminished. The move to Northern California proved to be a welcome opportunity to reawaken this love.
“I felt like walking on a new path, doing a few steps not knowing where it will lead me. I’ve discovered my old love and I nourish it now with all my heart. I realized what I’ve missed for so long – focusing on figure, shape and color, approaching and sculpting the essence of the human being.”
Meandering from figurative expressionism to pure formalism her work became more and more abstract and reduced. In her paintings Elke explores various nuances of the color black through different mediums and materials. With the nearly monochrome black canvas she opens up the confined space of the canvas and seeks to go beyond its limits, to create poetic images where the viewer can deeply immerse himself into the black pictorial space. However, her nonobjective compositions are not just about color, lines and forms, for the artist even the most abstract work is all about human consciousness, emotion and sensuality. Elke Reis follows the footsteps set by the Abstract Expressionists like Rothko or Newman and refers to the words of Armenian-American painter Arshile Gorky as her manifesto: “Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes … Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas.”
Elke moved back to Germany several years ago and started running a non-profit gallery space in Munich. Around the same time she resumed her teaching job, now trained in art therapy.
She took the first step exhibiting her art in California. Since then her work has been shown locally and internationally and is represented in several private collections throughout Europe and the US.
