Oktober 2004 to February 2005
Monika Bartholomé »inside is outside is inside«
Stars for Kolumba – Part 7
»Inside is outside is inside«. This statement goes to the core of Monika Bartholomé’s work. Her work as a draughtsman follows her power of imagination, seeking expression with the utmost immediacy afforded by the medium. The movement of the hand does not execute the drawing. It is the drawing itself. This is a perception which Picasso described in simple terms: »Ideas are merely points of departure. In order to know what you want to draw, you have to begin.« Persons, things and rooms are the subjects of Bartholomé’s works, their relationship to one another forever questioned. Her intention is to visibly connect all the levels we use to create reality: experience, memory and imagination. »Inside is outside is inside« is also the title of our third »Workbook« accompanying this exhibition. As in the two previous books, we are publishing as a monograph a central focus of the collection, which again include the major works of the artist.The »Dog Series«, one of her sequences of drawings, has been reproduced in its entirety, their sparse pencil strokes humorously portraying the changing existing constellations – such as between figure and ornament, colour surface and line, stillness and motion – also characterise the “Sliding Boxes” on exhibition, whose »backdrops« (up to five of them) may be moved by hand. A key to the understanding of the works is the »cosmos personals«, consisting of 185 frames. It shows drawings, photographs, found objects and texts, which are shown in the book corresponding to the intended wall installations. A group of works as early as 1982 already displays the painterly light and dark of the brush drawings for »Curtains« and »Heads« which are on exhibition, but with the lightness of the traces of movement and the finely nuanced grey tones of these spaces of light, Monika Bartholomé is expanding her previous terrain.
(Work Book Monika Bartholomé)