LINN LÜHN

SARAH BRAMAN
ELLEN GRONEMEYER
MARGHERITA MANZELLI
ALICE TIPPIT

(in cooperation with Kimmerich)

April 8 – May 7, 2022

Linn Lühn is pleased to invite Kimmerich Gallery for a joint exhibition. Featuring Sarah Braman, Ellen Gronemeyer, Margherita Manzelli and Alice Tippit, the 4 invited artists share an idiosyncratic use of semiotics, an exceptional use of color, and an approach of seeing the world through a light net of personal symbols, metaphors and references or associations to exist within, as well as between, the individual surfaces of their works.

Sarah Braman (b. 1970, lives and works in Amherst, MA, US) Braman combines elements from scrap-yard vehicles, old buildings or antique furniture with translucent volumes of color and light. The artist’s distinctive color palette of rich pinks, blues and purples permeates the space, from spray paint on found objects and hand-dyed fabric to the expansive nature of the glass forms. In their formal construction, her works relate to the legacies of minimalism and color-field painting.

Ellen Gronemeyer (b. 1979, lives and works in Berlin, Germany) Herein lies Gronemeyer’s magic - it is her ability to transform metaphor into paint, so that the physical works themselves become the protagonists in her world of open possibilities. An illogical world for sure, but one where seriousness and profundity are contained in the interplay between the artist’s cast of characters and her color-trembles and humming, gnarly brush marks - a world in which the original, biological meaning of metamorphosis, i.e. the transformation from an immature stage to an adult stage, is played out and, most astonishingly, suspended for a time and even reversed. A liberating act. (Anton Kern Gallery, 2021)

Margherita Manzelli (b. 1968, lives and works in Milano, Italy) The Milan-based artist is known for her portraits of fictional women, which emote a deep psychological tension. Manzelli has played an integral role in the reinvigoration of figurative painting. The expert and confident draftsmanship exhibited in Manzelli’s drawings is doubly offset by the fragility of these compositions. Their sparse execution, with the figures themselves only partially articulated, only emphasizes the potency of each figure. According to Manzelli, her paintings and drawings - which almost exclusively depict the isolated figures of young women - are not intended as portraits and are not based on photographs or on the use of models. Instead, these are figures that inhabit the artist’s imagination, characters that come alive through psychological tension, allowing them to emerge from the folds of the unconscious.

Alice Tippit (b. 1975, lives and works in Chicago, IL, US) ´My artistic practice is informed by my interest in language creation and the application of meaning. From afar, the effect is flat and clean but closer examination reveals a surface that is not so much flat as it is filled in with visible brush marks and slight variations in color. The images function as signs in which the interaction of form and color produce visual relationships that seem to project specificity while remaining ambiguous enough to allow interpretation and inquiry. Ambiguity of meaning in an image that otherwise indicates it can be easily understood poses a question for the viewer. How does one solve the image? The drive to conquer an image through definition is perplexing to me. Rather than provide solutions I prefer to complicate or compound potential readings through the associations that may be created between works.´ Alice Tippit, 2021

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