Christiane Middendorf

Gesteinsformation

90 x 90 cm

Christiane Middendorf's abstract acrylic canvases don't make it easy for the viewer. Although at first glance they seem to invite the eye to rest in a contemplative, almost meditative atmosphere, one realizes quickly that this harmony is a broken and ambivalent.

This demands an active participation of the viewer - it becomes impossible to hurry through the installation with the attempt of a passive consumption. Instead the viewer needs to get involved in the paintings, to emerge into the individual space they represent. And only at the point where he admits his involvement and enters that space, he will be able to recognize the complex universe of ideas that were turned into images.

Christiane Middendorf builds this universe with a painterly technique that reflects various art historical influences without ever becoming an imitation of a style or a historical copy. Indeed, her technique profits from the combination of various influences; but at the same time it manages to avoid the danger of representing just another postmodern pastiche. Christiane Middendorf is rather able to develop an own, individual expression from the reflection of the history of modern painting - an expression whose basic feature is a formal and conceptual combination of different layers.

In Christiane Middendorf's paintings, influences from expressionism meet with influences from abstract expressionism and its different associated styles like action painting and informal. But they follow less the example of American abstraction than moreover the one of German and French/Italian informal. Examining the formal aspects of Christiane Middendorf's paintings, one might indeed think of the spontaneous way e.g. De Kooning or Motherwell use color in their large canvases, or even of the ecstatic atmosphere that determined Pollock's action paintings. But her technique is a different one, including both rational and emotional aspects. Its concept differs from the spontaneous conversion of unconscious collective emotions in the drip paintings, or as well from the negation of any kind of form in the large canvases used by color field painting in order to claim the absolute meaning of the objective and de-individualized colored surface.

Christiane Middendorf born 1961 in Essen, Germany, 1981 A-Level/ commercial apprenticeship, 1990 studies in education science in Hagen, 1993 studies in various art forms.

Studies in creative designs of the informal, colour painting, free painting, private studies with freelance Slowak artist and private lecturer Angela Ramsauer, 2003 guest studies in the master class „free painting“ with Professor Qi Yang at the Institute for Education of Fine Arts and Art Therapy, Bochum

Art exhibition Salzburg, Innsbruck, Art Bodensee, Women’s museum Bonn, Galerie de Pook, NL, Gallery Andalusien Art, Worpswede, Zeche Zollverein Essen, Gallery Payer, Graz, Gallery Kass, Innsbruck, Burg Gallery, Insel Fehmarn, Gallery Ostendorff Mainz and Wiesbaden, World Fine Art Gallery, New York, ArtWorks Gallery, Richmond, Virginia, German embassy, Peking, Touchstone Gallery, Washington, Gallery Gora, Montreal, Canada, Gallery ´kunst am Wall´, Bremen, Marunouchi Gallery, USA, Galleria dárte contemporanea, Schweiz, Museum Färberhaus, Oberstaufen, International art exchange, VFDK, Suk Myeng university, Seoul/Südkorea, Chuongsong-Museum, Chuongsong/South Korea