PAST EXHIBITION

Caro Suerkemper: Unschuld in tausend Nöten

February 9, 2008—April 5, 2008

At Unschuld in tausend Nöten, Caro Suerkemper presents small-scale gouaches arranged on boards and a Janus-faced, Siamese twin in white, cast stone. The theme in her works on paper is the female form detached from everyday situations. Women in seemingly ritualized captivity are set behind bars and visors. Her drawings are characterized by geometrical reduction and an idiosyncratic tension between their detailed representation and generous layout. Formally, the drawings change from watery to opaque colours which, on the content level, correspond to a similar ambiguity between a spirit of playful earnest and the vitally crucial game.
The gouaches by Suerkemper invoke ambiguous pictorial worlds, relate to “human situations and feelings, to disrobement, touch, anaphylaxis, insecurity, fear and aggression, as well as to our environment, to social conditions and conventions, different designs for life and interpretation of femininity and beauty“ (Karin Schick). “Usually alone and exposed, Suerkemper’s forms ensnare the observers, binding them in questions about the mechanisms of seduction and submission, lust and control, and power and vulnerability. Caro Suerkemper articulates her interest in rules, laws and orders with scurrilous wit. She seeks out clumsy gestures, inadvertently loose expressions, and gives her protagonists the wide eyes and balloon-like breasts of comic characters“ (Karsten Müller). The drawings by Caro Suerkemper trigger a surprisingly intimate intensity between reality and illusion. Not without irony, the question of guilt or innocence is thrown back to the observer – the stony Siamese woman writhes full of fervour in the centre of the exhibition space with a playful, misty-eyed glance.

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