COSMIC DANCE 
GALLERY ELEKTROHALLE RHOMBERG 

In the pastel-colored works of the Vienna-based artist Anita Schmid, a complex and at the same time balanced understanding of the world is expressed. The structured picture surface is characterized by a delicate tension between two poles. The static gently surrenders to the organic, symmetries are build up only to start to stagger, and curves assert themselves against edges. Always approachable, consensual and considerate, the artist thus formulates a harmonious conception of cosmic aesthetics.

In geometric choreographies, the non-objective forms contour and weave themselves into thoughtfully moving compositions. The generally rational, almost cold understanding of geometry is subverted on the artist’s part and countered in intuitive transformations. She applies the pastel chalk, crushed to dust, as powder in direct contact with the picture surface through her hands. This meditative and intimate painterly process terminates the distance from color pigment to support material and personal gesture of the artist.

Mathematical phenomena such as the Fibonacci sequence and the resulting golden spiral can still be glimpsed in the works, but have long been expanded by sensitive expressions; they fragment the supposedly fixed absoluteness of the originally geometrically constructed pictorial surface. This way of working is not exhausted in the formal interest in the pure breaking of geometric rules. Rather, this softening stands for the increasing annulment of a rational matrix for understanding the world. With the help of the expressive addition of formal intervention, a world grasped by a cool mind begins to sway. Consequently, the artist's pastel paintings reveal that two supposedly opposing poles are ultimately nothing less than intertwined and interwoven yarns of the same string. In the aesthetic balance between reason and emotion, symmetry and asymmetry, form finding and form dissolution, Anita Schmid lets the picture’s surface perform a cosmic dance.

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- Niklas Koschel