Sabine Moritz

Pilar Corrias is pleased to present a series of new paintings by Sabine Moritz across both gallery spaces. Under the Skin and Heart of Drought focus on the juxtaposition of the external and internal world, setting the works within a larger continuum of an ever-immediate present.

The artist’s exploration of the dynamics of memory – how it is constituted, and the ways in which it is subjected to continuous processes of deformation and reformation – is a recurring and prominent concern. Playing with repetition and difference on the canvas, Moritz confronts the viewer with uncertainty, questioning whether memory can ever be an unmediated representation of the past. Moritz uses an unconscious process during the composition and creation of each work, resulting in what she calls a ‘fragmented beauty’. In this new series of paintings Moritz dissects these concerns of beauty and hope – holding onto beauty in defiance of the despair surrounding us.

Moritz adds layer upon layer of colour and form, at times overpainting, or scraping away, until she knows that the work is complete. The result often consists of a plethora of colours and lines that relate to one another without necessarily existing in harmony. Sometimes colours clash and shapes collide. However, as in a symphony, where each instrument adds a layer that is crucial for the music as a whole, the individual elements of her paintings contribute to the overall composition of the work. As themes appear and reappear through a composition, colours and shapes reappear in different areas on the canvas, holding the work together.

The mysterious, blue-toned Kamchatka III and Kamchatka IV refer to the Russian Peninsula, evoking a faraway place, too distant to understand. Is this an idyll or a realm of natural disasters?

Themes of human fragility, sensuality and strength are reflected in the painting Artemis and Actaeon, inspired by Titian’s rendition of the same subject in which the goddess Artemis turns Actaeon into a deer upon him seeing her naked, only for him to then be devoured by his hounds. Without portraying nature figuratively, Moritz’s abstractions are grounded in the natural world; they evoke a longing not for a specific place, but a lost idyll that cannot be reached again. She pays homage to the German notion of ‘Heimat’, which the philosopher Ernst Bloch described in the book The Principle of Hope (1954) as ‘something that shines into everyone’s childhood and where no one has ever been.’

Described by Hans Ulrich Obrist as ‘memories made visual – the fleeting impulses of the past rendered concrete in art’, Moritz’s work may be interpreted, above all, as a protest against forgetting, while also depicting the inherent fragility, mutability and immateriality of memory.

Sabine Moritz (b. 1969, Quedlinburg, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. Mortiz’s work explores the dynamics of how memory is constituted and the way in which it is subject to a continual process of deformation and reformation. Described by Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2013 as “memories made visual – the fleeting impulses of the past rendered concrete in art”, Moritz’s paintings, by turns abstract and figurative, activate an awareness of time. They are records of specific, highly personal experiences that open out onto the general horizon of a collective history, from the artist’s childhood in the East German town of Jena, to the abstract notions of transience, decay and seriality. Mortiz’s work may be interpreted, above all, as a protest against forgetting, while also stating in no uncertain terms the inherent fragility, mutability and immateriality of memory.

Moritz started her studies at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (from 1989 to 1991) and completed her studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (graduated 1994). Moritz has been widely exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Brussels, Paris and London. Selected solo exhibitions of Moritz’s work include: Lobeda oder die Rekonstruktion einer Welt, Lyonel-Feininger-Galerie, Quedlinburg (2022); Mercy, Pilar Corrias, London (2021); Journal Entries, Heni Leviathan, London (2020); Sterne und Granit, Kunsthalle, Rostock (2019); Neuland, Kunstverein Bremerhaven (2017); Harvest, Pilar Corrias, London (2015); Sabine Moritz, Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle, Wuppertal (2014); Concrete and Dust, Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg (2013); Lobeda, Kunsthaus sans titre, Potsdam (2011). Selected group exhibitions include: Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11, Imperial War Museum, London (2017); Faber-Castell International Drawing Award 2012, Neues Museum – Staatl. Museum für Kunst und Design, Nuremberg (2012); and The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Mechelen (2010).