Hand, Paper, Mirror

Gregor Podnar is excited to announce the fifth solo exhibition of Anne Neukamp – Hand, Paper, Mirror – featuring the artist’s latest works. Drawing inspiration from the hand game “Rock, Paper, Scissors’’, Anne Neukamp’s chosen title serves as a clear reference, familiarizing viewers with symbols on a subconscious level akin to motifs in her art, thereby rephrasing it into Hand, Paper, Mirror. A line-up of three words touching on just a few of the primary image motifs in Neukamp ́s latest works. In addition to paintings on canvas, the exhibition showcases artist ́s new series of works on paper. Neukamp ́s paintings on the large calendric organizers (monthly planner series) along with the large format paper works with reoccurring motifs, symbols and shapes (serial elements) represent a new aspect in the artist ́s oeuvre. The large works on paper take up and continue the grid of the standardized calendar pages thus becoming the site of painterly events and juxtapositions of distinct images. Anne Neukamp confronts symbols and images destined for everyday efficiency, drawing them into a visual world that transforms their identity. “Neukamp plays with communication and understanding, deliberately choosing symbols in print and type that for the last century have symbolized an absolutist conveyance of information. Equally at play in her work are ubiquitous symbols, like the on and off button symbol, that hover like shadows of the actual objects they represent (hardly existing in their original form any longer). Neukamp renders these very “black and white” signs and logos that once signified a kind of road-map to clarity ineffective by amputating, oversizing, or super-abstracting them or just turning them on their head. She uses a confidence in painting in combination with more mechanical forms of production and duplication, such as stenciling and playing with computer generated images, the diverse techniques underscoring her invitation to the viewer to contemplate shifts in meaning rather than nailing them down.” Johanna da Rocha Abreu Anne Neukamp, born in Düsseldorf in 1976, lives and works in Berlin. Neukamp studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden, where she has been teaching as a professor of painting since 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include Impossible Object, Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren, DE (2023), Pile ou Face, Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels, BE (2022), Theatre Anatomique, with Raiko Sanchez, Stephanie Kelly, Dresden, DE (2021), Pitching Pennies, Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf, DE (2020).